II 


!  ! 


lit 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Carle ton  Shay 


d  P \*i  €.  / 


LANDSCAPE    PAINTING 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

BY 

BIRGE    HARRISON 


WITH   TWENTY-FOUR    REPRODUCTIONS   OF 
REPRESENTATIVE    PICTURES 


EIGHTH  EDITION 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRJBNER'S  SONS 

1920 


Copyright,  1909,  by  Charlea  Scribner't  Son* 


Published  October,  1909 


Art 
Library 

NO 


J.   S.   H. 


FOREWORD 

THIS  little  book  represents  the  ful- 
filment of  a  promise  to  put  into  per- 
manent form  certain  impromptu  talks 
on  landscape  painting  given  before  the 
Art  Students*  League  of  New  York  at 
its  summer  school  at  Woodstock,  N.  Y. 
No  effort  has  been  made  to  elaborate 
the  themes  treated,  the  writer  feeling 
that  what  might  be  gained  in  literary 
form  might  very  well  be  lost  in  spon- 
taneity and  conciseness  of  statement. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  these 
little  talks  make  no  claim  to  infallibil- 
ity of  judgment.  They  simply  repre- 
sent the  present  beliefs  and  convictions 
of  a  painter  who  is  himself  still  a  stu- 

[vii] 


FOREWORD 

dent ;  but  they  are  sincere,  at  least,  and 
"straight  from  the  shoulder." 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  art  of 
color  printing  has  not  yet  reached  a 
stage  of  development  where  it  can  be 
trusted  with  the  reproduction  of  a  mas- 
terpiece of  landscape,  which  often  de- 
pends for  its  beauty  on  color-tones  and 
color- transitions  of  extreme  delicacy. 
In  the  present  volume  it  has  been 
judged  best  to  confine  the  reproduc- 
tions to  simple  half-tones  in  black  and 
white  —  to  give  no  color  rather  than 
color  which  is  false  and  misleading; 
and  the  illustrations  here  included  are 
therefore  presented,  not  as  adequate 
representations  of  the  works  them- 
selves, but  as  hints  and  suggestions 
only  of  the  qualities  which  give  to  those 
works  their  distinction  and  their  beauty. 

Thanks  are  due  to  the  editors  of 
Scribner's  Magazine,  The  North  Amer- 
[vin] 


FOREWORD 

ican  Review,  The  International  Studio, 
and  Palette  and  Brush  for  permission 
to  reprint  here  certain  of  the  chapters 
which  have  already  appeared  in  the 
publications  mentioned. 

B.  H. 

WOODSTOCK,  N.  Y.,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PACT 

I.  LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL    .    .  1 

II.    COLOR 12 

III.  VIBRATION 81 

IV.  REFRACTION 47 

V.    VALUES 65 

VI.    DRAWING 78 

VII.    COMPOSITION 89 

VIII.    QUALITY 99 

IX.     PIGMENTS 107 

X.  ON  FRAMING  PICTURES      ....  123 

XI.    ON  SCHOOLS 131 

XII.  THE  ARTS  AND  CRAFTS     ....  141 

XIII.  MURAL  PAINTING      ......  147 

XIV.  ON  VISION 154 


CONTENTS 

i 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XV.    THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  FEARLESSNESS 

IN  PAINTING  .......  158 

XVI.    THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT   .     .  164 

XVII.    TEMPERAMENT 178 

XVIII.     CHARACTER 189 

XIX.    WHAT  is  A  GOOD  PICTURE?       .     .  199 

XX.    THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM     .     .     .  207 

XXI.    THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART  284 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

J.    B.   C.   COROT 

"Landscape" Frontispiece 

3.   T.  MILLET  FACINO  PAGE 

"  The  Shepherdess" 10 

ANTON   MAUVE 

"A  Flock  of  Sheep"  ......      22 

CLAUDE   MONET 

"  The  Bridge  at  Argenteuil"     .     .     .      34 

WINSLOW    HOMER 

"The  Fog  Warning" 44 

D.    W.   TRYON 

"Twilight,  Autumn" 60 

CHARLES   H.   WOOD  BURY 

"  The  North  Atlantic" 74 

H.   W.    RANGER 

"Landscape" 90 

PAUL  DOUGHERTY 

"Land  and  Sea" 104 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING  PAOE 

E.    W.    REDFIELD 

"The  Red  Barn" .11* 

ALEXANDER   HARRISON 

"Le  Crcpuscule"    . 126 

CHILDE   HA8SAM 

"Brooklyn  Bridge" 132 

W.    L.    METCALF 

"Summer  Moonlight"     .....     148 

W.    ELMER  8CHOFIELD 

"Winter  in  Picardy" 154 

LEONARD   OCHTMAN 

"Wood  Interior" 166 

BRUCE   CRANE 

"November  HUls" 174 

BEN   FOSTER 

"Early  Moonrise" 186 

J.    ALDEN   WEIR 

"  New  England  Factory  Village "       .     196 

HENRT   G.    DEARTH 

"Moonrise"       202 

EMIL   CARLSEN 

"Landscape" 208 


[ziv] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING    PAOK 

BIRGE   HARRISON 

"Woodstock  Meadows  in  Winter"       ,    216 

W.    L.    LATHROP 

"At  Dusk" 228 

CHARLES   MELVILLE    DEWEY 

"October  Evening" 240 

GEORGE   INNE88 

"Autumn  Oakt"    , 248 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

FOB  some  occult  reason  in  which  the 
two  factors  of  race  and  psychology 
are  intimately  blended,  landscape  art 
in  its  best  expression  is  and  ever  has 
been  confined  within  the  narrow  geo- 
graphical limits  of  Northern  and  West- 
ern Europe.  Oriental  art — the  art  of 
Persia,  Japan,  and  India — has  always 
been  more  or  less  abstract  and  symbol- 
ical ;  and,  as  the  art  of  a  people  invari- 
ably reflects  the  character  of  the  race 
which  gave  it  birth,  we  may  deduce  with 
1:1] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

certainty  the  character  of  the  Oriental 
from  the  character  of  his  art.  By  revers- 
ing the  same  reasoning  we  reach  the  con- 
clusion that  the  simple  existence  of  our 
Aryan  ancestors  (lived  close  to  nature 
in  the  constant  companionship  of  ele- 
mental things)  has  found  expression 
in  the  landscape  art  of  their  remote 
descendants.  The  artistic  temperament 
is  no  growth  of  a  day.  It  has  its  roots 
in  the  far-away  beginnings  of  a  people, 
and  we  make  no  unwarranted  presump- 
tion in  asserting  that  the  landscape 
or  marine  painter  of  to-day  is  at  last 
giving  expression  to  the  groping  in- 
stincts and  ideals  of  his  cave-dwelling 
forbears.  The  blinding  storms  with 
which  they  battled,  the  mountains  they 
scaled  in  the  pursuit  of  game,  the  waves 
they  rode  in  their  primitive  canoes,  the 
hard  winters  that  froze  their  blood,  and 
the  soft  spring  suns  that  warmed  them, 

[2] 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

have  all  been  woven  into  the  fabric  of 
the  race.  In  this  way  only  can  we  ex- 
plain the  fact  that  the  peoples  of  North- 
ern Europe  have  alone  been  able  to 
comprehend  and  place  upon  canvas  the 
ever-varying  moods  of  nature — savage, 
cruel,  and  relentless  at  times,  and  at 
times  exquisitely  gentle,  brooding,  and 
poetic. 

What  is  more  difficult  to  explain,  how- 
ever, is  the  fact  that  this  ability  should 
only  have  developed  and  ripened  with- 
in the  last  hundred  years.  Of  course, 
viewed  in  the  larger  sense,  European 
pictorial  art,  as  a  whole,  is  a  compara- 
tively modern  thing — a  mere  matter  of 
four  or  five  centuries.  But  in  its  earliest 
development  it  was  in  no  sense  an  ex- 
pression of  out-of-door  life  or  of  out- 
of-door  feeling. 

This  is  doubtless  in  part  explained  by 
the  fact  that  the  earliest  European  art 

[3] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

was  an  Oriental  derivative  (see  the  By- 
zantine school),  and  that  it  remained 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance  in  the  service  of  the  Ori- 
ental religion  which  we  had  imported 
from  Palestine.  Moreover,  the  Italians 
were  themselves  more  or  less  Oriental  in 
character,  with  the  subtle  southern  tem- 
perament and  the  southern  mental  bias. 
There  was  little  of  the  cave-dweller  or 
the  viking  in  their  ancestry. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  quite  certain 
that  the  old  masters  knew  little  about 
landscape — and  cared  less.  Their  con- 
cern was  with  humanity;  its  joys  and 
its  sorrows;  its  loves  and  its  passionate 
hatreds;  its  wars;  its  pageants;  its  faiths 
and  its  superstitions.  Landscape  to 
them  was  never  more  than  a  stage 
setting,  a  background  against  which 
the  human  actors  played  their  parts. 
Viewed  simply  in  this  light,  it  was  not 

[4] 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

only  adequate,  but  frequently  artistic 
and  admirably  beautiful.  Nevertheless, 
it  was  not  landscape  at  all  in  the  mod- 
ern sense  of  the  word — landscape  as  we 
know  it.  It  was  conventional  in  form, 
false  in  color,  and  devoid  of  atmosphere 
and  luminosity. 

Not  until  the  early  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  then  in  far-away 
England,  did  the  first  true  school  of 
landscape  make  its  appearance.  A 
small  group  of  painters,  the  best  known 
of  whom  perhaps  were  Constable, 
Crome,  and  Bonington,  went  out  into 
the  fields,  and  brought  back  pictures 
which  were  the  first  true  impressions  of 
out-door  nature  ever  placed  upon  can- 
vas. Their  achievement  was  unique. 
Indeed,  it  was  one  of  the  most  as- 
tounding intellectual  feats  of  all  time, 
and  it  has  never  received  a  fraction 
of  the  praise  which  is  its  just  due. 
[5] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Art,  be  it  remembered,  is  a  thing 
of  infinitely  slow  growth,  each  school 
building  upon  the  foundations  prepared 
by  its  forerunners,  each  generation  add- 
ing its  mite  to  the  general  store  of 
knowledge  and  experience. 

The  English  portrait  men  of  the 
same  period,  for  instance,  although  fine 
painters,  simply  followed  in  the  tracks 
of  the  old  masters.  There  is  nothing  es- 
pecially original  in  the  canvases  of  Rey- 
nolds, Gainsborough,  or  Romney.  But 
this  little  band  of  landscapists,  with  no 
artistic  parents,  with  no  predecessors  to 
point  out  the  way,  suddenly  evolved  a 
totally  new  art  out  of  thin  air.  Their  dis- 
coveries, it  is  true,  were  confined  to  the 
realm  of  color,  but  their  achievements 
in  that  domain  were  sufficiently  remark- 
able to  give  England  a  place  which  she 
could  never  otherwise  have  had  among 
the  art-producing  nations  of  the  world. 

[6] 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

They  were  the  first  to  see  and  to  record 
the  pearly  tones  of  out-door  nature,  and 
their  technical  bequest  to  posterity  was 
an  extended  gamut  of  grays  and  mauves 
and  lilacs  which  remain  upon  the  ar- 
tist's palette  to  the  present  day. 

A  scant  half-dozen  of  their  pictures 
drifted  over  to  France,  and  there  be- 
came the  inspiration  of  a  new  art  move- 
ment, which  finally  resulted  in  the  great 
school  of  Barbizon.  Millet  and  Troyon, 
Corot  and  Rousseau  incontestably  pro- 
duced greater  work  than  Crome  and 
Constable,  but  their  pictures  were  all 
painted  on  the  lines  marked  out  by  the 
Englishmen.  Indeed,  it  is  questionable 
if  we  should  have  ever  had  a  Barbizon 
school  had  it  not  been  for  the  iconoclasts 
across  the  Channel. 

While  the  great  Barbizon  school  of 
painters  was  still  in  its  prime,  there  ap- 
peared upon  the  artistic  horizon  another 
[7] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

band  of  innovators  who  have  since  be- 
come known  as  the  French  Impression- 
ists or  Luminarists.  They  were  in  reality, 
as  their  name  implies,  painters  of  light, 
and  their  technique  was  founded  upon 
the  scientific  principle  that  light  is  essen- 
tially prismatic.  White,  being  made  up 
of  the  three  primary  colors — red,  yel- 
low, and  blue — should  so  be  painted, 
they  declared,  the  three  pure  pigments 
lying  side  by  side  upon  the  canvas — and 
the  same  with  red,  with  yellow,  and 
with  blue;  there  could  be  no  blue  so 
powerful  that  it  would  not  be  qualified 
with  touches  of  red  and  yellow,  no 
yellow  so  brilliant  that  the  red  and  the 
blue  were  not  felt  in  its  composition, 
no  red  so  intense  that  the  blue  and 
the  yellow  did  not  play  across  it.  The 
work  of  these  men  really  seems  to  vi- 
brate with  light,  and  the  word  "vibra- 
tion," first  employed  by  them,  has  now 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

been  permanently  added  to  the  artists' 
vocabulary.  Under  the  leadership  of 
Pissaro,  Sisley,  and  Monet  they  deliv- 
ered a  message  which  future  artists  can 
never  afford  to  ignore. 

But,  while  their  discovery  is  sound  in 
principle,  no  entirely  satisfactory  tech- 
nical method  of  applying  it  to  the  paint- 
ing of  pictures  has  yet  been  discovered. 
It  is  certain  that  the  dots  and  dashes 
and  cross-hatched  strokes  of  pure  color 
generally  used  by  theLuminarists  do  not 
render  the  effect  of  nature  as  seen  by 
the  ordinary  cultivated  eye.  The  veteran 
Monet  himself  has  lived  long  enough  to 
recognize  this,  and  in  his  more  recent 
work  he  has  abandoned  his  early  mili- 
tant method,  while  retaining  the  general 
principle  of  broken  color. 

This  is  one  of  the  unsolved  problems 
of  art  that  we  moderns  have  to  work 
out.  Another  is  the  question  of  how 

[9] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

best  to  convey  the  impression  of  motion 
upon  the  rigidly  quiescent  surface  of  a 
canvas.  This  has  never  been  accom- 
plished, but  to  assert  that  it  is  impos- 
sible would  be  a  hazardous  statement. 
Still  another  problem  derives  from  the 
limitations  of  the  human  eye.  A  good 
photographic  lens  will  see  every  leaf 
upon  a  tree  or  every  individual  in  a 
crowd  of  ten  thousand  people.  The  hu- 
man eye  can  see  at  best  but  a  dozen  or 
two  of  leaves  or  people,  the  remainder 
producing  the  effect  of  a  more  or  less 
indefinite  blur.  How  is  this  blur  to  be 
rendered  with  just  sufficient  definition 
to  produce  the  desired  effect  upon  the 
spectator  ?  It  is  quite  certain  that  other 
problems  will  arise,  problems  as  unsus- 
pected to-day  as  was  the  prismatic 
theory  of  light  a  hundred  years  ago.  It 
is  impossible  of  course  to  particularize. 
One  small  discovery  frequently  leads  to 

[10] 


LANDSCAPE  ART  IN  GENERAL 

a  much  greater  one,  and  the  only  thing 
we  can  predict  with  certainty  is  that  the 
unexpected  will  occur.  But  we  do  at 
least  know  that  the  door  is  ajar,  that 
the  glorious  sunlight  is  out  there,  just 
beyond,  and  that  nothing  can  keep  us 
longer  cooped  up  in-doors. 


f"! 


n 

COLOR 

\V E  are  all  born  color-blind.  The  most 
perfect  eyes  in  the  world  cannot  see  one- 
quarter  of  the  colors  which  are  known 
to  exist  in  nature.  Those  of  us  who  are 
fortunate,  it  is  true,  are  able  to  differ- 
entiate with  reasonable  exactness  the 
three  primary  colors  which  go  to  make 
up  our  limited  human  color-scale — but 
what  about  the  tones  which  certainly 
exist  above  the  ultra-violet  band  and 
below  the  infra-red? 

For  convenience,  the  full  color-scale  of 
nature  may  be  divided  into  four  octaves, 
of  which  less  than  one-quarter  is  taken 
up  by  the  prismatic  scale  of  the  rain- 
bow, which  includes  all  the  colors  visi- 


COLOR 

ble  to  the  human  eye.  Immediately  be- 
low the  line  of  infra-red,  at  the  point 
where  the  human  vision  ceases  to  record 
color-impressions,  there  begins  a  series 
of  vibrations  which  we  can  only  feel  as 
warmth;  and  still  lower  down  the  scale 
is  another  series  which  the  human  ear 
records  in  the  form  of  sound.  Yet  we 
know  of  a  certainty  that  these  vibra- 
tions are  also  potential  color-waves, 
that  each  note  of  music  carries  its  own 
special  color-note,  whose  quality  and 
beauty,  alas!  may  never  be  known  to 
man,  owing  to  the  limited  range  of  his 
vision. 

However,  no  one  can  with  certainty 
affirm  that  this  may  not  be  one  of 
the  joys  that  await  future  generations. 
Nothing  is  beyond  the  range  of  possi- 
bility. Already,  by  means  of  the  fluoro- 
scope,  we  are  able  to  extend  our  vision 

somewhat,  and  peer  over  a  little  into 

[is] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

the  realm  of  the  ultra-violet.  And,  if  it 
is  held  that  a  wise  providence,  at  the 
beginning  of  things,  limited  our  sensory 
nerves  to  the  record  of  such  impres- 
sions as  were  essential  to  the  physical 
existence  of  the  primal  creature,  thereby 
confining  our  later  aesthetic  activities  to 
the  exploitation  of  a  given  range  of  sen- 
sations, a  certain  regret  is  nevertheless 
permissible  when  one  thinks  of  the  be- 
wildering color-feast  that  might  await 
us  in  a  Wagner  overture  or  a  Beethoven 
sonata.  What  a  fascinating  problem  it 
would  be,  for  instance,  to  work  out  the 
color  probabilities  of  some  great  mas- 
terpiece of  music,  and  fling  them  glow- 
ing upon  the  translucent  page  of  a  vast 
cathedral  window.  If  the  time  ever 
comes  when  man  is  able,  by  means  of 
some  miraculous  transformer,  to  gaze 
upon  music-color,  it  is  safe  to  venture 
the  prediction  that  it  will  be  found  to 

[14] 


COLOR 

be  harmonious  and  beautiful  in  pro- 
portion to  the  harmony  and  beauty  of 
the  music  upon  which  it  is  based. 

This  is  guesswork,  of  course,  but  it 
rests  upon  a  strong  basis  of  probability. 
Our  actual  knowledge  of  the  subject  is 
at  present  limited  to  mathematics.  The 
velocity  of  the  impulses  has  been  noted 
and  the  number  of  the  vibrations  has 
been  counted.  We  know  those  of  sound 
to  be  comparatively  slow,  there  being 
but  4,000  vibrations  to  the  inch  in  the 
highest  treble  note  of  the  piano.  Above 
this  on  the  ascending  scale  comes  a  long 
series  of  vibrations  of  which  we  know 
little  or  nothing;  and  it  is  not  until  we 
reach  36,000  vibrations  to  the  inch 
that  we  come  again  within  the  range 
of  human  sensory  consciousness.  This 
number  represents  the  rate  of  vibra- 
tions in  the  red  note  of  our  prismatic 
scale.  The  rate  of  vibration  increases 

[15] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

throughout  the  scale  until  with  the 
ultra-violet  it  reaches  61,000  to  the  inch. 
Here  we  step  out  once  more  into  the 
unknown. 

Yet  color  has  no  actual  existence.  It 
is  only  by  courtesy  that  we  can  use  the 
word.  Nature  is  a  monochrome  save 
when  there  are  living  eyes  to  see  it.  The 
trees  are  not  really  green,  nor  are  the 
flowers  red  and  yellow  and  blue.  Each 
object  simply  reflects  rays  of  light  which 
vibrate  at  a  given  rate  of  speed;  and 
these  rays,  smiting  upon  the  sensitive 
retina  of  the  eye,  produce  the  impres- 
sions which  we  know  as  color.  Were  it 
not  for  the  retina  there  would  be  no 
color;  and  when  the  sensory  nerves  of 
the  retina  are  partially  paralyzed  or  de- 
ficient, as  in  the  case  of  the  color-blind, 
nature  appears  to  the  eye  in  her  true 
monochromatic  garb. 

The  human  eye  resembles  closely  the 

[16] 


COLOR 

photographic  camera,  both  in  structure 
and  in  its  manner  of  functioning.  At  the 
front  in  both  is  placed  the  lens,  with 
its  diaphragm  to  control  the  quantity  of 
light  which  enters  the  recording  cham- 
ber, this  function  being  performed  in 
the  human  eye  by  the  elastic  iris,  which 
contracts  and  expands  automatically  as 
the  light  waxes  or  wanes.  At  the  back 
of  the  camera  is  the  sensitized  plate, 
and  at  the  back  of  the  eye  is  the  infi- 
nitely more  sensitive  retina,  overlaid  by 
the  optic  nerve,  with  its  millions  upon 
millions  of  minute  tentacles,  reaching 
out  to  seize  upon  every  fleeting  color 
and  form  that  passes  before  the  lens. 
These  little  transparent  filaments  (so 
infinitely  minute  that  the  point  of  the 
finest  needle  is  like  a  fence-post  in  com- 
parison) are  divided  into  two  distinct 
varieties,  known  respectively  as  rods 
and  cones.  The  rods  are  straight  and 

[17] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

pointed  like  needles,  and  the  cones  are 
somewhat  blunt  at  the  extremity. 

We  are  told  that  the  number  of  these 
nerve  filaments  reaches  the  astonishing 
total  of  about  137,000,000,  of  which 
only  7,000,000  are  cones;  but  it  is  with 
this  comparatively  insignificant  num- 
ber of  7,000,000  cones  that  we  artists 
have  particularly  to  do.  It  is  the  func- 
tion of  the  cones  to  record  color, 
while  the  needles  take  care  of  the 
light. 

If  each  of  us  had  only  received  the 
7,000,000  cones  which  are  his  just  due, 
all  would  be  well.  Unfortunately,  this 
is  not  the  case.  Nature  abhors  a  dupli- 
cate, and  no  two  human  beings  are 
similarly  endowed  in  this  respect.  To 
the  favored  few  she  has  given  an  unfair 
share  of  the  precious  cones,  and  others 
she  has  deprived  of  their  birthright. 
The  fortunate  ones  are  the  great  color- 

[18] 


COLOR 

ists  of  the  world,  while   those   bereft 
are  the  color-blind. 

Now  we,  as  artists,  could  afford  to  ig- 
nore all  this  scientific  side  of  the  color 
question,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  it 
makes  clear  certain  things  which  it  is 
well  for  us  to  know.  In  the  first  place, 
it  shows  us  the  futility  of  any  serious 
attempt  to  cultivate  the  sense  of  color. 
We  are  born  with  a  certain  given  number 
of  color-cones,  and  with  just'  that  allot- 
ment we  must  be  content  to  go  through 
life,  for  there  is  no  known  way  of  in- 
creasing their  number,  or  of  augment- 
ing their  efficiency.  This  efficiency  may 
be  decreased,  however,  either  by  a  sud- 
den shock,  by  paralysis,  or  by  abuse  of 
tobacco.  In  partial  compensation  for 
the  depression  born  of  the  knowledge 
of  this  ruthless  law,  is  the  further  knowl- 
edge that  the  artistic  personality  of 
a  painter  must  be  chiefly  credited  to 

[19] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

the  working  of  this  same  law — for  our 
sense  of  color  is  primarily  due  to  the 
varying  number  of  color-cones  with 
which  each  of  us  is  endowed.  It  is  in 
color,  more  than  in  any  other  artistic 
attribute,  that  the  temperamental  qual- 
ity of  a  painter's  product  shows  itself 
most  clearly. 

In  more  than  the  strictly  scientific 
sense  heretofore  noted,  color  is  very 
closely  allied  to  music.  Both  are  sen- 
suous and  passional,  playing  directly 
upon  the  emotions  and  producing  their 
effects  by  some  mysterious  appeal  to 
the  subconscious,  whose  ways  have  as 
yet  eluded  us.  Both,  in  their  highest 
expression,  come  nearer  to  the  perfect 
ideal  of  beauty  as  felt  and  understood 
by  humanity  than  any  other  form  of 
art.  Finally,  both  are  stimulating  and 
mentally  suggestive,  while  attempting 

no  direct  intellectual  expression;  and 
[10] 


COLOR 

this  is  the  test  of  the  highest  form  of 
art — that  it  should  stimulate  the  im- 
agination and  suggest  more  than  it  ex- 
presses. This  emotional  attribute  of 
color  is  keenly  felt  even  in  a  work  of 
art  as  devoid  of  any  intellectual  appeal, 
as  a  Turkish  rug  or  a  Japanese  ceramic ; 
but  when  color  is  used  purposely  to 
enhance  and  offset  some  poetic  mood 
of  nature,  as  in  a  Venetian  sunset  by 
Gedney  Bunce,  or  a  spring  morning  by 
Corot,  its  poignant  charm  is  overpower- 
ing and  irresistible.  It  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  say,  however,  that  it  requires 
the  intuitive  genius  of  the  master  to 
accomplish  this  result  with  certainty. 
Those  of  us  who  are  gifted  only  with 
the  average,  normal  color-sense,  cannot 
hope  to  rise  to  similar  heights;  but  we 
can  nevertheless  learn  something  from 
the  great  ones — if  not  how  to  climb  the 
heights,  at  least  how  to  avoid  the  pit- 

[21] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

falls.  Where  the  color-sense  is  not  in- 
fallible, for  instance,  it  is  safe  to  avoid 
the  brilliant  tones,  to  deal  in  a  gamut  of 
quiet  and  delicate  hues.  I  have  a  friend 
who,  though  color-blind,  is  a  clever  and 
successful  painter.  His  pictures  sell  well, 
and  I  doubt  if  one  of  his  patrons  has 
ever  guessed  that  he  must  label  the  red 
and  the  green  on  his  palette  in  order 
to  tell  them  apart.  Discovering  his 
misfortune  only  after  several  years  of 
study,  he  determined  to  see  if  by  limit- 
ing his  palette  to  the  scale  of  yellows, 
blues,  and  grays  in  which  his  sight  was 
normal,  adding  only  a  little  touch  of 
red  or  green  here  and  there  to  heighten 
the  effect,  he  might  not  still  produce 
creditable  pictures.  He  was,  fortunately, 
a  good  draughtsman,  with  a  fine  sense 
of  the  picturesque  in  his  arrangement 
of  mass  and  values.  For  his  specialty 
he  wisely  chose  town-scapes  and  street- 

[22] 


COLOR 

scenes,  thus  eliminating  altogether  the 
dangerous  problems  of  the  greens  ;  and 
his  success  (for  he  has  taken  many 
medals  and  received  many  honors)  shows 
at  least  how  much  may  be  accomplished 
by  pure  intelligence  in  the  avoidance  of 
insurmountable  obstacles  and  difficul- 
ties. 

Another  useful  point  that  we  may 
learn  is  the  emotional  effect  of  the  dif- 
ferent colors.  The  warm  colors,  the 
yellow,  red,  and  orange,  are  always  ex- 
citing, stimulating,  sometimes  irritating, 
and  in  the  end  fatiguing.  Red,  as  is  well 
known,  always  enrages  a  bull;  and  in  a 
lesser  degree  it  affects  other  animals 
and  birds  in  the  same  way.  A  red  skirt 
floating  in  the  wind  is  the  best  protec- 
tion to  the  poultry-yard,  for  the  chicken- 
hawk  will  never  approach  it.  With  man 
the  stimulating  effect  of  this  color  ap- 
pears to  be  pleasantly  exciting  rather 

[23] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

than  disagreeable  when  taken  in  mod- 
eration; but  did  a  wrathful  deity  desire 
to  punish  mankind  with  a  specially 
hideous  form  of  torture,  I  could  im- 
agine nothing  more  dreadful  than  that 
he  should  change  all  the  green  in  the 
world  into  screaming  scarlet.  Imagine  ' 
a  bright  vermilion  world  under  a 
brilliant  sun,  and  tell  me  how  long 
it  would  be  before  all  the  inhabitants 
would  be  raving  maniacs. 
The  cool  colors — blue,  green,  mauve, 
violet,  and  all  the  delicate  intervening 
grays — are,  on  the  contrary,  restful 
colors  in  the  emotional  sense;  and  the 
wisdom  of  the  choice  of  these  tones  for 
the  landscape  scheme  of  the  world  is 
hardly  open  to  question.  Moreover,  it 
is  well  known  to  all  expert  household 
decorators  that  these  tones  are  always 
the  most  satisfactory  for  the  walls  and 
all  large  spaces  in  interior  decoration; 

[24] 


COLOR 

and  that  the  powerful  notes  of  red,  yel- 
low, and  orange  should  come  in  only 
as  a  spot  here  and  there  to  enliven  the 
effect.  If  we  carry  the  same  idea  into 
the  domain  of  purely  pictorial  art,  we 
shall  see  how  the  restful  beauty  of  a 
gray-green  landscape  by  Corot  is  en- 
hanced by  the  tiny  red  bonnet  of  his 
peasant  woman. 

While  it  is,  alas !  only  too  true  that  any 
personal  and  individual  progress  in  the 
domain  of  color  is  debarred  by  physical 
law,  it  is  nevertheless  a  fact  that  in  the 
broad  and  world-wide  sense,  most  of 
the  progress  made  in  art  in  the  past  two 
centuries  has  been  made  in  the  domain 
of  color.  For  one  thing,  we  have  in  the 
meantime  moved  out  of  doors.  From  the 
quiet,  subdued,  and  restful  light  of  the 
studio,  we  have  stepped  out  into  the 
gay  and  palpitating  sunlight;  and  in  so 
doing  we  have  had  to  meet  and  conquer 

[25] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

many  new  and  fascinating  problems, 
problems  whose  fundamental  color- 
scheme  is  the  reverse  of  the  one  which 
had  for  a  thousand  years  engrossed  the 
attention  of  the  older  artists.  In  the  quiet 
north  light  of  the  studio,  illumined  only 
by  the  sky,  the  lights  were  cool  and  the 
shadows  warm;  in  the  open  air,  on 
the  contrary,  the  lights  are  warm  and 
the  shadows  cool,  for  out  here  in  the 
open  the  gay  yellow  sunlight  is  the  source 
of  illumination,  while  the  shadows  catch 
only  the  cool  reflections  of  the  sky.  At 
the  present  time  it  is  hard  to  conceive 
how  difficult  it  was  for  the  first  land- 
scape painters  to  make  this  simple 
change  in  their  point  of  view,  how  te- 
nacious the  old  tradition  of  the  studio 
proved  to  be,  and  how  very  slowly  it  was 
abandoned  to  make  room  for  the  simple 
truths  of  out-of-door  nature.  Even  after 
the  new  law  had  been  fully  recognised 

[26] 


COLOR 

and  accepted,  the  methods  of  the  older 
masters  were  adhered  to.  So  great  and 
true  a  colorist  as  Corot,  even,  con- 
tinued to  "rub  in"  his  shadows  in  the 
warm  browns  of  the  sixteenth  century 
painters.  Of  course,  this  "rub  in"  was 
later  painted  over  with  the  violet  and 
pearl-gray  tones  of  out-door  nature, 
but  the  brown  underlay  has  begun  to 
"strike  through"  in  many  of  his  pict- 
ures, and  it  may  in  the  end  seriously 
impair  some  of  them.  It  was  not  un- 
til the  "luminarists"  came  along  with 
their  gay  and  militant  iconoclasm  that 
the  old  tradition  was  wholly  cast  aside, 
and  the  pearly  stream  of  out-door  color 
at  last  flowed  pure  and  free  and  un- 
defiled.  And  if  it  happens  (as  it  very 
well  may)  that  we  shall  also  cast  aside 
the  luminarists'  patchwork  system  of 
prismatic  spots  and  splashes,  we  shall 
nevertheless  be  eternally  their  debtors 

[27] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

in  that  they  freed  us  from  the  fetters 
that  bound  us  to  the  old  system  of 
in-door  painting,  and  gave  us  a  fresh 
palette  of  pearl  and  opal  and  lapis- 
lazuli,  in  place  of  the  old  snuff-colored 
affair  of  our  fathers.  Thanks  to  them, 
it  is  not  possible  for  the  worst  of  our 
modern  landscapists  to  use  such  dis- 
tressing color  as  is  to  be  found  in  the 
best  of  the  Hobbemas  and  Cuyps  and 
Ruysdaels  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

What  developments  in  the  direction  of 
color  the  future  may  hold  in  store  for 
us,  it  is  of  course  difficult  to  say.  One 
thing,  however,  is  sure;  the  mathe- 
matics which  govern  the  laws  of  color 
will  be  worked  out  and  tabulated,  as 
have  those  relating  to  music;  so  that  it 
will  be  possible  and  easy  for  any  one, 
either  expert  or  layman,  to  produce  a 
harmony  in  color  by  the  simple  appli- 
cation of  the  prescribed  formula.  But 

[28] 


COLOR 

beyond  this  the  mathematicians'  contri- 
butions to  art  will  have  little  value. 
Its  direct  benefits  will  be  found  to  be 
negative  rather  than  positive.  While  it 
may  prevent  the  perpetration  of  jarring 
discords,  it  will  hardly  make  possible 
the  creation  of  masterpieces;  for  here 
again  the  personal  equation  comes  into 
play.  Lacking  the  note  of  personality, 
no  real  art  is  possible.  A  musician  of 
my  acquaintance,  having  discovered 
that  when  the  law  of  mathematics 
was  applied  to  a  sonata  by  Beetho- 
ven, the  theme  worked  out  faultlessly 
to  a  seemingly  inevitable  conclusion, 
decided  that  the  process  could  be 
reversed,  and  that  a  given  theme,  if 
correctly  figured  out,  would  undoubt- 
edly produce  a  musical  number  of 
faultless  beauty.  He  put  his  theory  into 
practice  and  made  a  sonata  accord- 
ing to  this  system.  His  production  was 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

impeccable — and  absolutely  worthless. 
When  will  the  world  learn  that  art  can- 
not be  manufactured  ? 


m 

VIBRATION 

THE  most  splendid  achievement  of  the 
nineteenth  century  in  painting,  and  its 
best  legacy  to  the  future,  was  the  discov- 
ery of  the  technical  means  by  which  the 
scintillating  effect  of  living  light  could 
be  transferred  to  the  dead  and  rigid 
surface  of  a  canvas.  Of  this  the  old 
masters  had  absolutely  no  conception. 
The  discovery  belongs  to  our  genera- 
tion, and  is  a  distinction  of  which  any 
age  might  well  be  proud — for  it  is  the 
only  important  step  in  advance  made 
since  the  great  Renaissance  of  the  fif- 
teenth century.  Without  it  landscape 
art  had  hardly  been  possible — land- 
scape art,  that  is,  in  the  modern  sense 

[31] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

in  which  we  know  it.  There  were  indeed 
many  landscape  painters  among  the 
older  masters — Ruysdael  and  Cuyp, 
Hobbema,  Salvator  Rosa,  Claude,  and 
even  Rembrandt  on  occasion.  But,  owing 
to  a  curious  psychological  phenomenon, 
none  of  these  men  were  able  to  see 
straight  out  of  their  eyes  once  they  were 
in  the  open  air.  They  painted  land- 
scape, but  landscape  in  which  the  fields 
and  the  hills  and  the  trees  bore  no  rela- 
tion to  the  skies  that  overhung  them, 
in  which  the  shadows  were  warmer  in 
color  than  the  lights,  in  which  browns 
took  the  place  of  violets,  and  in  which 
(owing  to  ignorance  of  the  laws  of 
vibration)  the  surface  of  the  canvas 
nevei  entirely  disappeared  from  view. 
As  I  have  previously  stated,  the  dawn 
of  the  new  movement  was  seen  in  Eng- 
land, when  Constable  and  his  confreres 
carried  their  easels  into  the  open,  and 
[32] 


VIBRATION 

brought  back  studies  wherein  the  pearly 
tones  of  out-of-door  nature  were  for  the 
first  time  accurately  seen  and  noted. 

A  few  of  these  pictures  finding  their 
way  to  France,  were  eagerly  studied  by 
a  group  of  young  Frenchmen,  who, 
tired  of  the  hide-bound  conventions  of 
David  and  Delaroche,  were  quick  to 
recognize  and  absorb  the  new  light. 
Armed  with  this  fresh  knowledge,  these 
men  in  their  turn  went  out  into  the 
fields,  and  looked  and  studied  and 
painted;  and  thus  grew  up  the  great 
school  of  Barbizon. 

A  little  later  the  artistic  world  was 
startled  by  the  appearance  of  the 
French  impressionists  or  luminarists. 
According  to  them,  nature  had  spread 
her  palette  upon  the  heavens  in  the 
form  of  the  rainbow,  where  all  who 
looked  might  see  and  understand  it» 
And  everywhere  and  always,  on  hill 
IPJ 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

and  dale,  on  rock  and  tree,  so  long  as 
light  endured  there  must  also  be  the 
rainbow — attenuated  and  diminished 
in  power,  it  is  true,  but  with  its  three 
primary  and  prismatic  colors,  locking 
and  interlocking,  shifting  and  shim- 
mering and  playing  across  one  another 
in  an  iridescent  dance  of  color  that 
was,  or  should  be,  always  clearly  visi- 
ble to  the  eye  of  the  trained  artist. 
And  as  they  saw  nature  so  these  men 
painted  their  pictures,  laying  the  pure 
pigments  side  by  side  upon  the  canvas 
in  strokes  and  dots  or  dashes  of  red 
and  yellow  and  blue  which,  seen  at  the 
proper  distance,  were  supposed  to  fuse 
into  the  desired  tones  and  masses,  while 
at  the  same  time  retaining  a  luminous 
quality  of  their  own  never  before  seen 
upon  canvas. 

•  I  can  remember  the  first  exhibition 
which  these  men  gave  in  Paris  in  the 

[34] 


VIBRATION 

little  rotunda  behind  the  Palais  de 
1'Industrie;  and  the  bewilderment  and 
scorn  with  which  it  was  received  by  the 
critics  and  the  older  painters.  I  can  re- 
member also  the  heroic  struggle  which 
they  made  against  apparently  hopeless 
odds ;  and  we  all  know  how  they  finally 
won  the  long  fight,  proving  their  point 
so  conclusively  that  no  one  to-day 
thinks  of  questioning  it. 

But  while  all  painters  now  admit  that 
the  prismatic  theory  of  light  as  applied 
to  the  art  of  painting  is  both  scientifi- 
cally correct  and  artistically  admirable 
— that  it  is  practically  impossible  to 
secure  luminosity  in  a  picture  without 
some  sacrifice  to  the  principle,  it  is 
nevertheless  open  to  question  if  the 
crude  and  primitive  method  invented 
by  the  French  Impressionists  is  neces- 
sarily the  last  word  on  the  technical 
side  of  the  matter.  We  must  have 

[35] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

"vibration"  in  a  picture,  it  is  true,  be- 
cause without  vibration  there  can  be 
no  light,  but  may  it  not  be  possible  to 
secure  the  necessary  vibration  without 
loss  of  "quality,"  that  charm  of  surface 
with  which  we  would  not  willingly  part  ? 
There  are  many,  many  paths  by  which 
the  problem  may  be  approached.  In- 
deed, one  of  the  chief  delights  of  the  art 
of  painting  lies  in  the  fact  that  each 
artist  does,  and  of  necessity  must,  in- 
vent his  own  technique ;  for  his  personal 
technique  is  an  inalienable  part  of  the 
personal  vision  which  makes  his  art  his 
own.  Nevertheless  there  are  in  a  broad 
sense  only  four  general  methods  of 
painting  with  oil  colors,  from  which 
(used  either  in  their  direct  and  simple 
expression  or  infinitely  varied  and  com- 
pounded) all  of  our  personal  technical 
methods  must  be  drawn.  First  we  may 
mention  the  method  used  by  so  many  of 

[36] 


VIBRATION 

the  old  masters,  which  consisted  in  a 
solid  imderpainting  in  black  and  white 
with  a  slight  admixture  of  red.  In  this 
method  the  whole  scheme  of  the  picture 
was  built  up  with  these  three  pigments, 
and  all  of  the  drawing  and  modelling 
was  accomplished  without  any  attempt 
at  color.  Then,  after  a  very  thorough 
drying,  the  work  was  completed  and 
the  color  obtained  by  a  series  of  very 
thin  glazes  drawn  over  the  dried  and 
hardened  surface.  This  method,  al- 
though wonderfully  sound  in  itself  and 
lasting  in  its  results,  must  of  course  be 
discarded  by  the  modern  painter  for 
the  reason  that  it  precludes  all  possi- 
bility of  vibration. 

Of  the  three  remaining  systems  one 
other  is  entirely  bad  for  the  same  reason 
— it  does  away  with  vibration.  This 
system  consists  in  mixing  the  tones 
evenly  and  applying  them  to  the  canvas 

[37] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

in  smooth  flat  masses  in  much  the  same 
manner  as  a  house  painter  paints  his 
door  or  cornice.  There  remain  then 
practically  but  two  systems  from  which 
the  modern  painter  is  at  liberty  to 
choose.  The  first  of  these  is  the  spot  and 
dash  method  used  by  the  Impressionists 
and  their  school.  It  must  be  clear  to 
any  one  that  this  system,  while  giving 
beautiful  results  in  the  way  of  luminos- 
ity, does  not  logically  follow  the  forms 
of  nature,  or  reproduce  her  surfaces, 
and  it  must  therefore  be  regarded  as 
an  imperfect  and  a  temporary  manner 
which  is  destined  to  be  superseded  in 
time  by  some  more  supple  and  expres- 
sive technique. 

The  last  of  the  four  systems  men- 
tioned and  one  which  has  gradually 
come  to  be  adopted  by  the  vast  majority 
of  our  best  landscape  painters  is  one  in 
which  vibration  is  obtained  by  means 

[38] 


VIBRATION 

of  a  cool  overtone  painted  freshly  into 
a  warm  undertone,  care  being  taken 
not  to  mix  or  blend  the  two  coats  and 
not  to  cover  up  completely  the  under- 
tone, rather  letting  it  show  through 
brokenly  all  over  the  canvas ;  the  vibra- 
tion being  secured,  naturally,  by  the 
separate  play  of  the  warm  and  the  cold 
notes.  Neither  alone  would  accomplish 
this  purpose,  nor  would  the  neutral 
gray  that  would  result  from  a  too  thor- 
ough mixing  of  the  tones  in  the  final 
brush-work. 

This  method  has  first  of  all  the  great 
advantage  of  being  thoroughly  logical; 
for  in  nature  herself  the  undertones 
are  represented  by  the  local  color  of  the 
various  units — leaves,  grass,  rocks,  and 
good  rich  earth;  and  these  are  always 
warmer  and  more  vivid  in  color  than 
the  lights  dropped  upon  their  surfaces 
by  the  over-arching  sky.  But  the  method 

[39] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

has  the  still  greater  advantage  of  being 
wonderfully  supple  and  responsive- 
lending  itself  not  only  to  the  infinite 
variations  of  technique  demanded  by 
differing  temperament  in  the  artist,  but 
allowing  endless  latitude  for  any  and 
all  desired  changes  in  composition  or 
mass  after  the  picture  is  placed  on  the 
canvas;  for  all  of  these  changes  can  be 
made  in  the  undertone  itself  before 
the  overtone  is  applied,  and  therefore 
before  any  attempt  to  secure  vibration 
has  been  made.  Indeed  the  whole  pic- 
ture in  all  its  exact  values  can  and 
should  be  built  up  in  this  preliminary 
covering  of  the  canvas,  for  the  value 
of  the  overtone  must  in  every  case  ex- 
actly match  the  value  of  the  undertone. 
While  we  wish  to  secure  broken  color, 
we  must  avoid  broken  values,  for  they  ut- 
terly destroy  atmosphere.  Any  one  who 
wishes  to  prove  this  to  his  own  satisf ac- 

[40] 


VIBRATION 

tion  can  readily  do  so  by  making  the 
following  experiment.  Paint  a  sunny 
sky  in  two  simple  tones,  using,  say, 
delicate  gray  pink  for  the  underlay  and 
blue  green  or  green  blue  for  the  overlay, 
varying  the  color  from  the  horizon  up 
as  it  occurs  in  nature.  In  the  first  ex- 
periment mix  the  overlay  with  extreme 
care  until  its  value  exactly  matches  that 
of  the  underlay.  Then  mix  another  lot 
to  the  green  blue  either  slightly  darker 
or  slightly  lighter  than  the  underlay. 
Apply  these  tones  each  to  one-half  of 
the  prepared  sky,  and  you  will  find 
that  the  sky  painted  with  the  perfectly 
matched  tone  will  fly  away  infinitely, 
will  be  bathed  in  a  perfect  atmosphere, 
while  the  other  half  of  the  canvas  will 
remain  merely  paint  and  canvas,  and 
will  have  no  atmospheric  quality  what- 
ever. The  explanation  of  this  is  very 
simple — nature  deals  in  broken  color 

[41] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

everywhere,  but  she  never  deals  in 
broken  values.  The  color  dances,  but 
the  values  "stay  put." 
As  to  the  general  tint  of  color  of  the 
undertone  no  rule  can  be  given,  for  it 
can  never  in  any  two  pictures  be  alike. 
It  will  vary  infinitely,  according  to  the 
effect  to  be  painted,  and  also  according 
to  the  temperament  of  the  artist.  There 
would  seem  to  be  only  two  rules  that 
cannot  be  broken:  first  the  undertone 
must  be  warmer  than  the  overtone,  and 
second  it  must  never  be  brown ;  and  this 
for  the  excellent  reason  that  out-of-door 
nature  abhors  brown,  and  never  uses  it. 
Even  the  house-painter's  most  venom- 
ous effort  in  this  direction  is  generally 
met  by  kindly  and  all-forgiving  mother 
nature  with  some  gray  reflection  from 
the  sky  to  mitigate  its  worst  virulence. 
The  one  weak  spot  in  the  technical 
armor  of  the  Barbizon  painters  was 


VIBRATION 

their  tenacity  in  clinging  to  the  tradi- 
tional recipe  of  the  brown  rub-in.  And 
although  this  was  allowed  to  dry  thor- 
oughly and  was  then  completely  painted 
over  with  pearly  tones  that  were  true  to 
nature,  the  browns  are  now  beginning 
to  strike  through  to  the  surface — to  the 
serious  detriment  of  some  of  the  finest 
pictures  on  earth. 

Now  when  the  fullest  acknowledg- 
ment has  been  made  of  our  stupendous 
indebtedness  to  the  discoverers  of  pris- 
matic painting,  it  will  be  wise  for  us  to 
recognize  the  limitations  of  the  system; 
to  admit  that  there  are  very  many  effects 
in  which  it  must  be  used  with  extreme 
caution,  and  others  in  which  it  had  best 
not  be  employed  at  all.  If  we  frankly 
envisage  the  fact  that  its  chief  function 
is  to  endow  our  dead  pigments  with  life, 
with  the  power  to  convey  in  a  picture 
the  joyous  impression  of  dancing  light, 

[43] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

we  shall  understand  where  these  limita- 
tions begin.  As  the  system  gives  its  best 
results  in  the  translation  of  brilliant 
sunlight,  so,  as  the  light  decreases  its 
value  decreases,  until  in  a  low -toned 
moonlight  it  may  become  positively 
detrimental.  It  can  easily  be  seen  that 
in  this  subdued  light  the  sibilant  vibra- 
tion of  powerful  color-tones  would  be 
fatally  out  of  place  and  their  use  detract 
seriously  from  the  brooding  sense  of 
mystery  which  gives  to  night  its  most 
poignant  charm. 

We  must  not  forget,  moreover,  that 
another  weakness  inherent  to  the  sys- 
tem lies  in  the  physical  impossibility  of 
securing  with  pigments  and  brushes  any 
approximation  to  the  infinitely  fine 
and  delicate  color  vibration  of  nature — 
where  no  spot  or  dash  or  stroke  of  pure 
color  is  anywhere  visible;  and  that  our 
best  efforts  in  this  direction  are  there- 

[44] 


VIBRATION 

fore  only  a  compromise — that  owing  to 
this  compromise  our  best  technique  of 
vibration  remains  at  the  present  time 
more  or  less  obtrusive,  and  that  any 
technique  which  obtrudes  itself  is  to 
that  extent  bad  technique;  for  tech- 
nique, as  Millet  so  truly  said,  "should 
always  hide  itself  modestly  behind  the 
thing  to  be  expressed." 

Finally  let  us  frankly  admit  the  fact 
that  vibration  has  little  to  do  with  at- 
mosphere in  a  picture  (in  spite  of  much 
wordy  argument  to  the  contrary).  A 
Whistler  nocturne,  for  instance,  which 
is  painted  without  the  slightest  vibra- 
tion, or  any  attempt  at  broken  color, 
may  swoon  in  the  most  exquisite  bath 
of  atmosphere,  while  a  vibrant  Monet, 
with  a  few  hard  edges,  may  lack  all 
atmospheric  quality. 

Atmosphere  in  a  painting  is  only  se- 
cured by  the  use  (conscious  or  un- 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

conscious)  of  the  laws  of  "refraction," 
a  much  more  subtle  and  elusive  visual 
phenomenon  of  which  I  will  say  a  word 
in  the  following  chapter. 


IV 

REFRACTION 

is  refraction — refraction  as  ap- 
plied to  art  ?  When  I  first  had  to  speak 
to  my  own  students  of  this  most  elusive 
but  most  important  quality,  I  found 
myself  curiously  handicapped  by  the 
fact  that  there  was  no  word  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  to  describe  it.  A  careful 
search  of  the  dictionaries  revealed  noth- 
ing that  met  the  need.  The  French 
word  envelope  and  our  own  "lost-edge" 
were  descriptive  of  the  result  only  and 
not  of  the  cause.  Neither  radiation,  nor 
reaction,  nor  reflection,  nor  ambience 
fully  defined  the  thing  which  it  was  de- 
sired to  describe. 

[47] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Piracy  seemed  the  only  way  out  of 
the  dilemma;  so  I  boldly  seized  upon 
the  word  refraction  and  forced  it  willy- 
nilly  to  assume  the  new  role.  And 
while  it  was  necessary  to  twist  it  far 
from  its  original  meaning  I  have  faith 
that  with  growing  years  it  will  come 
to  carry  gracefully  the  full  burden  of 
definition. 

For  the  purposes  of  this  paper  there- 
fore the  reader  will  kindly  assume  re- 
fraction to  stand  for  that  intimate  effect 
of  one  mass  of  color  or  value  upon  its 
adjoining  mass  which  results  in  the 
"lost-edge,"  and  a  general  diffusion  of 
tone,  thus  giving  to  pictures  their  atmos- 
pheric quality. 

Now  refraction  is  only  in  a  very  lim- 
ited sense  an  objective  fact.  It  is  mainly 
a  visual  fact  whose  operation  is  due  to 
the  imperfect  construction  of  the  lens 
of  the  human  eye.  The  scientific  fact  is 

[48] 


REFRACTION 

that  the  edges  of  things  are  sharp  and 
hard  as  a  rule.  This  is  amply  proved 
by  the  photographic  lens,  which  gives 
us  a  clear-cut  definition  all  over  the 
plate  which  the  human  eye  could  never 
hope  to  compass  in  looking  at  nature 
through  its  own  imperfect  instrument. 
And  if  the  camera  were  still  more  per- 
fect, if  there  were  no  question  of  focus, 
it  would  probably  give  us  an  edge 
everywhere  as  sharp  as  the  traditional 
Toledo  blade. 

But  this  scientific  fact  would  still  re- 
main an  artistic  lie.  Fortunately,  we 
painters  have  to  do  only  with  impres- 
sions and  not  with  realities.  For  these 
impressions  we  must  rely  solely  upon 
the  lenses  which  God  has  given  us ;  and 
as  a  painter  I  congratulate  myself  daily 
that  the  lens  of  the  human  eye  was  de- 
signed not  at  all  after  the  pattern  of 
the  lenses  adapted  to  the  camera,  the 

[49] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

microscope,  and  the  various  other  scien- 
tific instruments.  As  we  are  now  pro- 
vided, nature  is  infinitely  beautiful  to 
us;  while  it  might  have  been  a  hideous 
nightmare  of  sharp  and  cutting  angles 
or  edges,  without  rest  or  relief  any- 
where. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  our  purposes  to 
enter  here  into  the  physiological  struc- 
ture of  the  human  eye.  It  will  be  enough 
to  state  that  its  radius  of  exact  vision 
is  extremely  limited;  so  limited  in  fact 
that  at  a  distance  of  six  feet  from  the 
eye  it  would  hardly  be  possible  for  any 
human  being  to  enumerate  accurately 
the  spots  on  a  target  four  feet  in  diam- 
eter, while  holding  the  gaze  rigidly 
fixed  on  the  bull's-eye.  Beyond  the  ra- 
dius of  twelve  inches  from  the  centre 
the  image  begins  to  blur,  and  this  blur 
increases  rapidly,  until  out  of  the  tail  of 
the  eye  on  either  side  we  get  only  an  in- 

[50] 


REFRACTION 

definite  consciousness  of  things  rather 
than  any  genuine  vision  of  things  them- 
selves. 

It  is  curious  when  you  come  to  think 
of  it,  how  many  untold  centuries  it  has 
taken  mankind  to  recognize  this  sim- 
ple visual  phenomenon,  which  every  one 
of  the  race  must  have  been  experienc- 
ing ten  thousand  times  a  day  for  ten 
million  years;  and  how  few  there  are 
even  to-day  who  are  fully  cognizant 
of  it. 

A  gentleman  of  marked  intelligence 
and  culture  once  berated  me  for  what 
he  termed  the  artist's  impudence  in  giv- 
ing to  the  public  a  smudge  of  green- 
ish brown  or  of  gray  up  against  the  sky 
and  asking  them  to  accept  it  as  a  tree. 
"Why,"  he  said,  "I  can  see  every  leaf 
on  that  oak  tree  in  the  meadow  yonder. 
And  so  can  any  one  whose  eyesight  is 
normal." 

[51] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

My  reply  to  this  was  to  pin  a  card  to 
one  of  the  oak's  lower  branches  and  ask 
my  friend,  standing  at  ten  paces,  to  tell 
me  how  many  of  the  leaves  he  could 
count  without  shifting  his  gaze  from 
the  white  card. 

"Well,  by  Jove!"  he  presently  ex- 
claimed, "I  can't  count  up  to  fifty." 

"What  do  the  rest  of  the  leaves  look 
like,"  I  asked,  "a  more  or  less  indefi- 
nite blur?" 

"Yes!  Just  a  blur." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "now  you  understand 
just  a  little  of  the  meaning  of  the  word 
refraction." 

But  the  new  knowledge  did  not  seem 
to  console  him.  He  continued  to  regret 
the  loss  of  all  those  leaves.  I  could  not 
convince  him  that  it  would  have  been 
a  disaster  had  he  been  obliged  to  see 
each  individual  leaf  of  all  the  millions 
which  the  tree  doubtless  carried,  and  in 

[52] 


REFRACTION 

addition  to  this,  to  be  conscious  of  all 
the  twigs  and  blades  of  grass  and  other 
infinite  details  around  about. 

Now  any  interesting  picture  motive 
generally  has  a  focus,  or  centre  of  inter- 
est on  which  the  artist's  eye  rests  with 
especial  pleasure;  and  in  view  of  the 
visual  limitation  just  described  it  is  evi- 
dent that  this  portion  will  appear  much 
more  definite  in  outline  than  the  out- 
lying regions  of  the  composition ;  which 
will  become  more  and  more  blurred,  as 
they  recede,  with  the  softened  or  lost 
edge  everywhere.  This  is  refraction; 
and  as  the  eye  sees  it,  so,  without  ques- 
tion, the  hand  should  paint  it. 

But  there  are  other  motives — certain 
of  Whistler's  nocturnes,  for  instance — 
wherein  the  eye  broods  dreamily  over 
the  whole  scene,  not  resting  fixed  upon 
any  one  given  point  of  interest;  and 
these  should  be  painted  precisely  as 

[53] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Whistler  painted  them,  the  refraction 
distributed  evenly  all  over  the  canvas. 
Whistler,  in  fact,  was  past  master  of  the 
art  of  refraction,  its  one  great  and  su- 
preme prophet;  and  it  is  to  the  con- 
summate and  most  artistic  use  which 
he  made  of  this  one  quality  that  his 
work  owes  all  of  that  emotional,  ap- 
pealing, and  poetic  charm  which  is  its 
distinguishing  trait. 

Of  course  every  artist  of  any  training 
at  the  present  day  is  more  or  less  aware 
of  this  phenomenon,  otherwise  his  pict- 
ures would  not  find  acceptance  at  the 
hands  of  the  juries,  for  they  would  be 
hopelessly  hard  and  edgy  and  unatmos- 
pheric.  No  one,  for  instance,  would  to- 
day think  of  painting  the  spots  of  sky 
showing  through  the  interstices  of  a  large 
tree  with  the  tint  he  had  mixed  for  the 
sky  out  in  the  open  on  the  other  side  of 
the  picture.  If  he  did  so  paint  these 

[54] 


REFRACTION 

spots,  they  would  shine  out  like  elec- 
tric lights  and  he  would  instinctively 
lower  their  value  at  once.  Here  the  law 
of  refraction  has  come  into  force  again, 
and  the  visual  no  longer  accords  with 
the  actual.  The  sky  behind  the  tree  of 
course  is  in  reality  just  as  light  as  the 
rest  of  the  sky,  but  the  refraction  from 
the  surrounding  dark  mass  of  foliage 
has  robbed  the  spots  of  much  of  their 
power  of  light  and  has  softened  them  in 
every  way. 

But  while  all  good  painters  to-day  are 
aware  of  refraction,  and  (whether  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously)  use  it  in  their 
work,  very  few,  I  think,  have  any  con- 
ception of  the  far-reaching  effect  and 
control  of  the  law.  I  am  myself  abso- 
lutely convinced  that  the  refraction  ema- 
nating, we  will  say,  from  a  large  dark 
tree  standing  up  against  a  sunset  sky  will 
affect  the  sky  and  gradually  lower  its 

[55] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

value  out  to  its  very  centre;  and  that, 
per  contra,  the  darkest  spot  in  the  tree 
itself  will  be  found  to  be  near  its  focal 
point,  owing  to  the  inward  refraction 
from  the  sky — for  naturally  refraction 
acts  both  ways,  from  light  to  dark  as 
well  as  from  dark  to  light.  Whether  it 
is  necessary  or  advisable  in  practical 
painting  to  utilize  the  law  up  to  the 
extreme  limit,  is  of  course  a  point  that 
is  open  to  discussion.  As  painters  our 
business  is  to  transmit  to  picture-lovers 
through  the  medium  of  our  pictures  the 
emotions,  and  the  impressions  of  strength 
and  power,  or  of  poetic  beauty  which 
have  come  to  us  direct  from  nature ;  but 
in  doing  this  we  are  not  called  upon  to 
saddle  ourselves  with  more  difficulties 
than  are  absolutely  necessary.  Indeed 
it  is  by  means  of  the  wise  selection  and 
synthesis  of  the  elements  which  are  es- 
sential to  his  work  and  the  ruthless  elim- 

[56] 


REFRACTION 

ination  of  all  such  as  are  unessential 
that  the  consummate  artist  shows  his 
calibre.  Nevertheless  I  can  recall  certain 
canvases  by  Corot,  poetic  masterpieces 
of  the  first  order,  in  which  the  very 
fullest  use  of  this  law  was  made.  It 
can  do  no  harm  at  least  for  any  painter 
to  keep  the  law  always  in  mind,  to  be 
used  whenever  its  use  will  add  an  ele- 
ment of  beauty  or  of  distinction  to  his 
work. 

In  addition  to  the  above  defined  the- 
ory, a  long  and  close  study  of  the  law  of 
refraction  has  left  on  my  mind  the  strong 
conviction  that  the  out-worn  and  rather 
cheap  practice  of  vignetting  was  not 
without  a  certain  sound  basis  of  justi- 
fication in  the  underlying  laws  of  na- 
ture. If  you  will  bear  in  mind  the  fact 
that  the  colors  and  values  that  are  seen 
out  of  the  corners  of  the  eyes,  are,  on 
account  of  their  very  situation,  able  to 

[57] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

affect  only  a  very  limited  number  of  the 
sensitive  nerves  of  the  retina,  you  will 
understand  that  the  force  of  their  im- 
pact must  be  proportionately  less  than 
those  which  come  to  the  eye  from  the 
full  centre  of  vision ;  and  if  you  are  will- 
ing to  try  the  experiment  of  looking  for 
five  minutes  at  a  given  scene  in  nature, 
keeping  the  gaze  fixed  during  all  that 
time  on  some  focal  point — a  church 
steeple,  for  instance — but  throwing  the 
mind's  eye  constantly  back  and  forth 
from  outside  margin  to  centre  and  from 
centre  to  outside  margin  again,  it  will 
gradually  dawn  upon  you  that  there 
is  an  actual  and  very  marked  visual 
difference  in  the  color  and  value  in- 
tensity of  the  two  radii.  I  am  sure, 
therefore,  that  the  eighteenth-century 
artists  who  made  use  of  this  law  in 
their  work  were  fundamentally  correct 
in  their  intuitions;  but  the  excess  to 

[58] 


REFRACTION 

which  they  carried  it  landed  them  in 
the  quagmire  of  the  commonplace  and 
vulgar.  Nevertheless,  I  am  certain  that 
no  picture  in  its  extreme  corners  should 
be  painted  with  quite  the  same  vigor  of 
technique  or  strength  of  color  or  of  value 
as  in  its  natural  focal  centre.  Indeed, 
a  careful  study  of  certain  masterpieces 
shows  that  wonderful  results  have  occa- 
sionally been  obtained  by  the  reserved 
and  masterly  use  of  this  principle. 
In  the  "Shepherdess,"  by  Millet,  for  in- 
stance, the  sense  of  immensity  and  of 
limitless  space  which  marks  and  dis- 
tinguishes that  great  canvas  is  derived 
largely  from  the  extremely  subtle  use  to 
which  he  put  his  knowledge  of  this  ob- 
scure phenomenon. 

So  far  I  have  spoken  of  refraction  only 
in  its  relation  to  values.  But  there  is 
also  color  refraction ;  and  here  its  action 
is  much  more  in  harmony  with  the  scien- 

[59] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

tific  laws  of  color,  for  its  first  and  im- 
mediate effect  is  to  call  up  the  com- 
plementary. I  sat  one  day  out  in  the 
blazing  sunlight  on  the  white  painted 
deck  of  a  river  steamer  holding  in  my 
hand  a  crimson  ticket,  in  the  centre  of 
which  a  square  hole  had  been  perfo- 
rated. After  glancing  through  this  hole 
for  an  instant  I  handed  the  ticket  to  my 
companion  and  asked  her  to  say  what 
color  the  deck  appeared  to  be  as  seen 
through  the  square  opening.  "Why! 
it  is  brilliant  green,"  she  replied,  at 
the  same  time  putting  the  ticket  aside 
to  see  if  in  reality  the  deck  had 
been  painted  green  in  that  particular 
spot. 

This,  of  course,  was  an  extreme  case; 
the  very  powerful  scarlet,  under  the 
compelling  stress  of  the  intense  sun- 
light, had  simply  conjured  up  its  com- 
plementary in  an  exceptionally  bril- 

[60] 


REFRACTION 

liant  and  dramatic  demonstration.  But 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  the  law  is  al- 
ways at  work.  Any  painter  who  has 
posed  his  sittep^  against  a  red  back- 
ground, for  instance,  must  have  noted 
how  the  red  ground  brought  out  the 
green  tones  in  the  flesh.  And  has  it  ever 
occurred  to  you  why  never  a  portrait 
was  painted  against  a  bright  blue  back- 
ground. Simply  because  there  has  never 
been  found  a  human  being  modest 
enough  to  stand  for  the  jaundiced  pre- 
sentment of  himself  that  would  be  the 
natural  result — yellow  being  the  com- 
plementary of  blue. 
It  results  from  this  that  no  color  has 
any  definite  and  fixed  existence  of  its 
own — once  it  is  out  of  the  tube.  It  is 
changed  and  varied  infinitely  as  its  sur- 
roundings change  and  vary.  Even  when 
it  is  fixed  definitely  under  the  varnish 
of  some  masterpiece,  it  remains  subject 

[61] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

to  the  same  old  law,  and,  to  a  certain 
extent,  can  be  made  attractive  and 
lovely,  or  forbidding  and  ugly  accord- 
ing to  the  background  against  which 
the  picture  is  hung. 

Of  course  in  the  scale  of  subdued  col- 
ors color-refraction  works  feebly,  and  it 
is  therefore  of  minor  importance  to  the 
landscape  painter,  though,  as  I  have  al- 
ready noted,  Corot  knew  how  to  make 
good  use  of  the  little  crimson  cap  on 
his  peasant  women;  for  the  tiny  spot 
of  red  doubled  the  beauty  of  his  deli- 
cate greens.  But  the  figure  painter  oc- 
casionally finds  a  knowledge  of  this 
law  of  great  value;  as,  for  instance, 
when  he  wishes  to  play  upon  the  emo- 
tions by  the  simple  use  of  pure  color. 
Splendid  effects  have  been  produced 
in  this  way  by  Monticelli,  by  Frank 
Brangwyn,  and  more  recently  by  the 
Spaniard  Sorolla. 

[62] 


REFRACTION 

It  is  fortunate,  perhaps,  that  the  limits 
of  space  here  draw  a  line,  for  the  things 
that  might  be  said  about  refraction  are 
endless.  I  will,  however,  add  one  parting 
word  in  regard  to  its  technical  side. 
How  may  we  best  secure  the  lost-edge 
and  the  other  qualities  deriving  from 
refraction  while  maintaining  crisp  draw- 
ing and  a  free  and  agreeable  brush- 
work.  In  this  we  can  hardly  do  better 
than  study  and  follow  the  two  great 
masters  of  the  art,  Corot  and  Whistler. 
Prepare  for  the  refraction,  as  they  did, 
by  lowering  values  as  you  approach 
the  edge,  so  that  the  final  stroke  which 
draws  your  limb  or  your  tree  may  be 
as  fresh  and  as  crisp  as  possible  without 
being  hard;  and  if  you  are  painting  in 
broken  color — that  is,  using  prismatic 
vibration  to  secure  luminosity — then  do 
all  this  preparatory  work  fully  and 
carefully  in  the  undertone,  so  that  the 

(63] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

final  painting  may  be  accomplished 
with  that  dash  and  freedom  which,  say 
what  you  may,  will  always  remain  an 
admirable  quality  in  a  picture. 


VALUES 

OF  late  years  the  English  term  "values" 
has  entirely  replaced  the  Italian  "chiar- 
oscuro" by  which  painters  were  long  wont 
to  describe  the  light  and  shade  of  a 
picture  as  apart  from  its  color.  The 
change  is  certainly  a  good  one. 

Values  are  a  pure  convention,  because 
they  are  built  upon  the  assumption  that 
nature  is  monochromatic.  They  are 
however,  a  most  important  convention 
— one  that  is  practically  indispensable 
to  a  painter — for  it  is  upon  sound  values 
that  pictures  depend  for  their  solidity 
and  their  convincing  power.  Good 
painting,  after  all,  is  a  matter  of  analy- 
sis and  synthesis;  and  we  painters  are 

[65] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

so  used  to  picking  nature  to  pieces, 
studying  her  in  detail,  considering  the 
undertones  by  themselves,  for  instance, 
while  we  hold  the  overtones  in  abey- 
ance, that  we  find  no  difficulty  in  sepa- 
rating the  chiaroscuro  from  the  color, 
and  temporarily  assuming  a  color- 
blindness if  we  have  it  not. 

But  values  are  a  convention  in  still 
another  sense.  Our  ability  to  counter- 
feit nature  in  a  picture  depends  upon  a 
palette  made  up  of  a  certain  number  of 
dead  pigments,  whose  scale  of  light  and 
shade  is  ludicrously  inadequate  when 
compared  with  that  of  nature.  Limited 
thus  on  the  material  side,  the  best  we 
can  do  is  to  translate  the  infinite  value- 
scale  of  nature  into  our  sadly  finite  scale 
of  pigments,  and  endeavor,  by  most 
careful  balance,  to  adjust  our  means  to 
our  ends.  This  would  be  practically 
impossible  were  it  not  for  the  kindly 

[66] 


VALUES 

help  we  receive  from  the  human  imagi- 
nation, which  is  ever  ready  to  accept  a 
mere  hint  and  build  upon  it  a  whole 
world;  to  fill  in  all  discrepancies;  and, 
given  a  few  scratches  of  pen  or  pencil, 
to  construct  therefrom  a  complete 
representation  of  nature.  How  pecul- 
iarly human  is  this  mental  attitude  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  no  animal  is 
ever  known  to  recognize  the  most  real- 
istic painting  as  anything  more  than 
simple  paint  and  canvas. 

Contenting  ourselves,  however,  with 
our  own  small  value-scale,  as  we  needs 
must,  and  assuming  it  to  be  adequate, 
the  most  important  thing  to  consider  is 
the  value-key  of  our  picture.  Assuming 
the  whole  scale  of  values  from  the  deep- 
est black  to  the  purest  white  to  be  repre- 
sented by  the  number  100,  the  question 
arises  as  to  what  proportion  of  this 
number  we  shall  use  in  the  particular 

[67] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

work  which  we  are  proposing  to  exe- 
cute. In  this  matter  the  golden  rule  is 
reserve.  We  lose  rather  than  gain  in 
power  by  forcing  the  note,  and  a  picture 
in  which  the  whole  scale  from  black 
to  white  should  be  employed  would 
be  absolutely  without  atmosphere,  and 
without  charm.  It  would  indeed  be  a 
crudity  and  a  horror,  from  which  we 
would  flee  with  hands  on  high.  The 
whole  beauty  of  a  canvas  depends  often 
on  the  wisdom  with  which  we  make  this 
choice  of  key — whether  our  picture  is 
pitched  in  the  upper,  the  middle,  or  the 
lower  register,  and  whether  we  use  a 
limited  or  an  extended  scale. 

It  is  evident,  of  course,  that  we  could 
attentuate  our  scale  to  the  vanishing 
point,  so  that  a  breath  would  almost 
blow  the  picture  from  the  canvas;  just 
as  by  going  to  the  other  extreme  we 
should  fatally  brutalize  the  work. 

[68] 


VALUES 

But  within  the  limits  of,  say,  the  num- 
ber ten  and  the  number  ninety  of  the 
scale,  there  exist  a  dozen  or  more  keys 
of  value,  any  one  of  which  we  are  at  lib- 
erty to  select.  It  is  equally  evident  that 
a  picture  painted  in  any  one  of  these 
keys  would  be  true  to  nature,  if  the 
relative  values  within  the  scale  were 
carefully  noted  and  adhered  to.  But  in 
every  case  there  would  be  one  of  those 
keys  which  would  have  suited  the  mood 
of  that  particular  picture  better  than 
any  other,  and  it  is  in  the  intuitive  se- 
lection of  just  the  right  key  that  the 
true  artist  most  frequently  shows  his 
power.  As  a  rule,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
upper  middle  range  will  be  found  best 
to  suit  the  great  majority  of  pictures, 
but  there  are  motives  whose  brilliancy 
calls  out  for  the  highest  attainable  key 
of  light,  and  others  whose  brooding 
mystery  must  hide  itself  in  the  shadowy 

[69] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

gloom  of  the  lower  register.  Of  equal 
importance  with  this  question  of  alti- 
tude in  the  register  is  that  of  the  numer- 
ical scale — whether  to  use  ten,  twenty, 
fifty,  or  seventy  of  the  possible  100 
points  in  the  full  scale.  This  will  depend 
largely  upon  the  effect  to  be  produced, 
whether  the  message  we  have  to  convey 
is  one  of  dramatic  power,  of  brilliancy, 
or  of  tender  and  poetic  charm.  It  will 
depend  also  considerably  upon  the 
character  of  the  work  and  its  ultimate 
destination.  In  a  mural  decoration,  for 
instance,  the  demand  for  a  restricted 
scale  of  values  is  absolutely  mandatory, 
because  the  first  consideration  in  a  work 
of  this  character  is  that  the  observer 
must  always  remain  conscious  (or  sub- 
consciously conscious)  of  the  flat  sur- 
face of  the  wall.  If  this  plane  were  de- 
stroyed, the  architectural  unity  would 
suffer — the  sense  of  the  supporting 

[70] 


VALUES 

power  and  strength  of  the  wall  being 
gone.  In  an  easel  picture  it  is  just  the 
contrary;  there  we  desire  to  annihilate 
the  flat  surface  of  the  canvas,  to  pro- 
duce the  illusion  of  atmosphere  and  to 
convey  the  impression  that  it  would  be 
possible  to  step  over  the  border  of  the 
frame  and  out  into  the  fields  beyond. 
In  this  case  therefore  the  scale  of  values 
must  be  generous  enough  to  convey  the 
impression  of  solidity  and  reality,  while 
being  held  sufficiently  in  hand  to  obvi- 
ate the  danger  of  crudity. 

As  this  whole  question  of  values  is  a 
matter  of  translation,  and  of  delicate  ad- 
justment inside  of  fixed  conventional 
limits,  there  is  practically  no  effect  in 
nature  that  cannot  at  least  be  suggested 
by  a  wise  and  skilful  use  of  pigments. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  familiar  effect 
where  the  sun,  high  in  the  heavens,  is 
reflected  in  a  brilliant  pathway  of  scin- 

[71] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

tillating  light  across  the  surface  of  the 
sea.  In  this  case  it  is  evident  that  the 
actual  color-scale  of  nature  is  a  thousand 
times  more  powerful  than  that  of  the 
artist's  palette;  yet  by  a  careful  selec- 
tion of  the  register,  and  a  wise  adjust- 
ment of  the  scale,  it  is  quite  possible 
not  only  to  render  the  illusion  of  this 
radiant  scene,  but  to  do  this  without  ex- 
hausting our  limited  value-scale.  In  fact, 
in  this,  and  in  all  similar  effects  in  which 
radiation  of  light  is  the  principal  motive 
of  the  picture,  it  is  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance to  keep  well  within  the  limits  of 
the  scale,  in  order  that  even  the  deepest 
shadows  shall  remain  luminous  and 
palpitant.  Nature  never  exhausts  her 
value-scale.  Even  in  the  most  violent 
effects,  she  always  holds  plenty  in  re- 
serve. And,  so  far  as  is  possible  with 
our  limited  scale,  we  should  do  the 
same. 

[72] 


VALUES 

This,  of  course,  does  not  mean  that  we 
should  paint  a  gray-day  landscape  in  a 
key  so  low  that  we  could  give  its  full 
force  to  a  burst  of  sunlight  that  might 
suddenly  strike  across  the  scene.  (If  the 
sunlight  is  to  be  included,  it  should  have 
been  conceived  as  part  of  the  picture  in 
the  beginning,  and  so  arranged  for.) 
But  it  does  mean  that  we  should  always 
be  able  to  go  a  little  higher  on  the  high 
note  or  a  little  lower  on  the  low  note  if 
it  is  desirable  to  do  so. 

Having  decided  upon  the  scale  and 
the  register,  the  next  most  important 
thing  is  so  to  visualize  our  subject  that 
we  shall  be  able  to  group  our  values  in 
large  and  simple  masses.  See  big!  Grab 
the  essential,  and  leave  the  little  things 
for  any  foolish  person  who  chooses  to 
gather  them  up.  To  tell  the  truth,  detail 
is  so  blatant,  so  insistent,  that  it  takes 
years  of  hard  training  to  see  beyond  it, 

[73] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

to  appreciate  the  essential  bigness  of 
things.  This  is  particularly  true  of  out- 
door nature.  The  sun  is  a  great  leveller. 
It  flattens  all  masses,  the  lights  as  well 
as  the  shadows.  An  out-door  picture- 
motive  is  complicated  indeed  if  it  can- 
not be  divided  into  four  or  five  domi- 
nant values.  If  these  are  understood, 
and  painted  with  sympathetic  truth,  it  is 
astonishing  how  little  detail  it  requires 
to  complete  the  picture — the  trunk  of  a 
tree,  a  few  scattered  leaves,  the  curve  of 
a  road,  and  the  trick  is  turned.  Always 
leave  something  to  the  imagination  of 
the  beholder.  A  picture  is  often  com- 
plete long  before  you  suspect  it. 

There  is  probably  no  better  way  of 
training  the  eye  to  simplicity  of  vision, 
than  studying  moonlight,  for  in 
moonlight  effects,  the  broad  masses 
alone  are  visible,  and  the  shadows  lie 
all  over  the  picture  in  one  big  soft  value. 

[74] 


J  s 

3  3 

I  l 

o  £ 

a;  5 


$ 


a  & 


VALUES 

The  lights  are  distributed  in  two  or 
three  values  at  most,  and  nowhere  is 
there  any  detail.  Try  to  see  your  day- 
light effects  in  the  same  way,  and  you 
will  come  far  nearer  the  truth  than  you 
might  think. 

Personally,  I  am  inclined  to  hold  values 
to  be  the  most  important  quality  in  a 
picture — and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  work  must  depend  for  its  charm 
upon  the  other  qualities  of  color,  de- 
sign, and  refraction.  But  a  picture  that 
is  good  in  all  these  respects  being  weak 
and  unsound  in  values,  will  neverthe- 
less be  a  poor  picture.  Values  might  be 
compared  to  the  skeleton  in  a  human 
figure,  which  depends  for  its  beauty  upon 
the  exquisite  curves  of  the  rounded  limbs, 
the  silken  sheen  of  the  hair,  and  the  color 
of  eyes  and  lips  and  blushing  cheeks. 
Remove  the  skeleton,  and  the  whole 
fabric  of  beauty  falls  to  earth  a  shape- 

[75] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

less  mass.  Moreover,  values  are  one  of 
the  few  things  in  art  that  can  be  learned 
by  almost  any  one  who  is  gifted  with  or- 
dinary eyesight;  and  for  that  particular 
reason  they  should  engage  the  earnest 
attention  of  every  serious  student.  One 
who  has  thoroughly  mastered  them 
has  gone  a  long  way  on  the  road  to 
success  in  painting. 

Of  course,  all  that  has  here  been  said 
refers  only  to  the  art  of  the  past  and  of 
the  present,  for  it  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain that  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
conditions  which  now  bind  us  will  en- 
dure forever.  When  £  try  to  draw  aside 
the  veil,  and  peer  into  the  mists  of  the 
future,  I  seem  to  see  another  art,  less 
material,  more  akin  to  the  pure  spirit  of 
music;  an  art  stripped  of  all  that  is 
gross  and  material;  an  art  in  which 
abstract  beauty  alone  shall  rule.  In  this 
new  art  values  may  very  possibly  be 
[7e] 


VALUES 

unnecessary,  and  all  will  be  stated  in 
terms  of  beautiful  color. 
This  is  not  yet  however;  and  any  art 
which  is  to  endure  must  be  true  to  the 
spirit  of  its  own  age. 


[77! 


VI 

DRAWING 

DRAWING  is  the  grammar  of  art.  As 
grammar  is  the  framework  on  which 
all  good  literature  is  built,  so  drawing 
is  the  foundation  of  all  good  painting. 
It  is  no  more  possible  to  imagine  a 
great  picture  with  crude  and  incom- 
petent drawing  than  it  is  to  think  of  a 
great  sonnet  whose  grammar  should  be 
uncouth  and  halting.  Like  grammar, 
also,  drawing  is  not  a  virtue  to  be  ex- 
tolled in  a  picture,  but  an  essential  to 
be  demanded. 

Fortunately,  both  grammar  and  draw- 
ing may  be  learned  by  any  one  of  good 
average  intelligence.  In  reference  to 
drawing,  however,  this  statement  ap- 

[78] 


DRAWING 

plies  only  to  that  kind  of  good,  sound, 
commonplace  drawing  which  serves  to 
uphold  a  picture  in  which  color  and 
sentiment  are  the  main  things;  but  not, 
of  course,  to  the  truly  great  drawing 
which  is  beautiful  in  and  by  itself,  and 
which  is  one  of  the  rarest  qualities  in 
all  art — so  rare  indeed  that  the  great 
draughtsmen  of  the  world  can  be 
counted  upon  the  fingers  of  one  hand. 
Of  these  probably  Holbein  and  Leo- 
nardo were  the  most  eminent  examples. 
In  the  work  of  these  two  men  the  sense 
of  refined  and  tender  line  was  so  ex- 
quisite that  we  should  almost  prefer  to 
have  it  without  color;  and  indeed  when 
color  was  used  to  secure  the  added 
beauty  of  modelling,  as  in  the  "Mona 
Lisa,"  it  was  always  flat  and  conven- 
tional. It  would  be  impossible,  for  in- 
stance, to  imagine  a  Holbein  painted 
in  the  impressionist  manner  of  the 

[79] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

present  day.  The  grace  of  line  which 
is  this  master's  chief  distinction  would 
be  destroyed  by  the  modern  method  of 
applying  the  pigment:  and  this  shows 
once  again  the  futility  of  the  frequent 
demand  that  a  single  picture  shall  con- 
tain in  itself  all  of  the  manifold  quali- 
ties of  art. 

In  landscape,  of  course,  drawing  is  of 
secondary  importance;  color,  refrac- 
tion, and  vibration  ranking  first;  but 
no  landscapist  must  imagine  that  for 
this  reason  a  sound  knowledge  of  draw- 
ing can  be  dispensed  with.  The  char- 
acter of  his  tree,  his  stream,  his  moun- 
tain outline  is  as  important  as  the 
character  of  an  eye  or  a  mouth  in  a 
drawing  of  the  human  face.  Moreover,  a 
good  knowledge  of  drawing  is  essential 
to  good  workmanship.  The  charm  of  a 
picture  often  lies  in  the  freshness,  the 
brilliancy,  and  alacrity  of  the  brush- 

[80] 


DRAWING 

work;  and  this  kind  of  stroke  can  only 
be  secured  when  it  is  backed  by  a  sure 
knowledge  of  the  underlying  form.  The 
poor  and  uncertain  draughtsman  fum- 
bling for  form  loses  all  "quality." 

Turn  the  pages  of  any  exhibition  cata- 
logue, and  you  will  find  it  difficult  to 
place  your  finger  on  the  name  of  a 
really  fine  landscape  painter  who  is  not 
also  a  fine  draughtsman.  And  I  think 
that  inquiry  will  disclose  the  fact  that 
the  best  of  them  have  devoted  at  least 
four  or  five  years  pretty  exclusively  to 
the  study  of  drawing.  This  is  none  too 
much.  But  the  best  place  to  acquire 
this  knowledge,  even  for  a  landscape 
painter,  is  not  out  of  doors  before  na- 
ture; because  it  is  so  much  easier  to 
study  drawing  in-doors  from  the  nude. 

In  art,  as  in  the  other  affairs  of  life, 
those  go  fastest  and  furthest  who  follow 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  In  the  open, 

[81] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

therefore,  our  attention  should  be  con- 
centrated on  the  study  of  color,  vibra- 
tion, refraction,  and  the  mystery  of 
atmosphere — on  those  qualities  in  fact 
which  can  be  studied  nowhere  else  to 
the  same  advantage.  But  if  a  class  of 
students  in  drawing  should  plant 
themselves  down  in  the  woods,  using 
the  oaks,  the  elms  and  the  beeches 
for  models,  their  progress  toward  an 
exact  and  synthetic  knowledge  of 
form  would  be  slow  indeed.  The  tree 
forms  would  permit  them  too  much 
latitude.  The  articulation  of  a  limb 
upon  the  trunk  of  an  oak,  for  instance, 
might  start  a  foot  higher  up  or  a  foot 
lower  down  and  still  be  in  character, 
but  the  articulation  of  a  knee  joint, 
an  elbow,  or  a  shoulder  of  the  human 
figure  must  be  true  to  the  inch.  In  fact, 
nowhere  else  can  the  sense  of  form  be 
so  perfectly  trained  as  in  following  the 

[82] 


DRAWING 

exquisite  and  subtle  lines  of  the  most 
beautiful,  the  most  perfect  thing  in 
nature — the  nude  human  figure.  There- 
fore, although  we  take  it  for  granted 
that  the  drawing  of  a  landscape  shall  be 
good,  it  is  not  in  the  drawing  of  land- 
scape itself  that  landscape  drawing  can 
best  be  learned.  When  the  eye  is  once 
trained  to  see  and  feel  the  infinite  deli- 
cacies of  the  human  form,  it  will  find 
no  difficulties  in  any  of  the  other  forms 
of  nature.  A  landscapist  should,  of 
course,  familiarize  himself  with  the 
character  of  the  trees,  the  hills,  the  turn 
of  winding  streams  and  of  hillside 
roads  by  making  frequent  pencil  draw- 
ings from  nature,  but  he  should  first  of 
all  learn  to  draw. 

Hence,  when  the  student  brings  in 
badly  drawn  landscape  studies,  the 
only  thing  to  do  is  to  send  him  back  to 
town;  or,  if  he  happens  to  be  a  capable 

[83] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

draughtsman,  erring  through  careless- 
ness, to  tell  him  to  spend  more  time 
with  the  charcoal  and  less  with  the 
brush.  It  has  been  suggested  that  in 
order  to  keep  the  eye  of  the  student 
always  keyed  up  in  drawing,  it  might 
be  well  to  have  a  class  in  out-door  figure 
painting  connected  with  every  school  of 
landscape  art.  This  idea  gained  numer- 
ous adherents  at  the  time  of  the  wonder- 
ful exhibition  in  New  York  of  the  Span- 
ish painter,  Sorolla  y  Bastida.  Nor  was 
this  to  be  wondered  at;  for  these  bril- 
liant and  exquisite  studies  of  out-door 
Spanish  life,  the  figures  throbbing  with 
vitality,  and  the  very  air  palpitating 
with  the  gay  southern  sunshine,  might 
well  excite  the  enthusiasm  of  all  lovers 
of  art;  and  their  astounding  realism, 
coupled  as  it  was  with  a  true  sense  of 
beauty,  was  the  very  thing  that  would 
be  sure  to  fascinate  the  younger  paint- 

[84] 


DRAWING 

ers.  Nevertheless  nothing,  in  my  opin- 
ion, could  be  less  intelligent  than  the 
above  suggestion.  For  the  student  who 
aims  to  go  far  in  art  the  golden  rule  is, 
one  thing  at  a  time. 

If  you  consider  for  a  moment,  you 
will  perceive  that  painting  the  figure  in 
the  open  involves  a  simultaneous  at- 
tack on  nearly  every  problem  in  the 
wide  domain  of  art.  You  have  first 
of  all  the  out-door  questions  of  atmos- 
pheric vibration  and  refraction,  and 
the  consideration  of  the  color-scale  and 
value-scale ;  then,  in  addition  to  these, 
you  have  practically  all  the  in-door 
problems,  which  include  figure-compo- 
sition and  arrangement,  in  addition 
to  the  usual  problems  of  drawing  and 
modelling — the  latter  presented  in  a 
reversed  and  unfamiliar  form,  owing  to 
the  new  and  unexpected  color-reflec- 
tions from  the  sky  and  the  surround- 

[85] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

ing  sunlit  landscape.  Of  course,  if  this 
kind  of  study  were  regarded  as  merely 
a  form  of  dissipation,  a  little  spree  as 
it  were,  to  vary  the  dull  monotony  of 
landscape  routine,  it  might  have  its 
good  points.  Change  is  a  great  tonic; 
and  it  does  no  harm  occasionally  to 
shoot  arrows  at  the  stars  even  if  you 
know  that  they  will  not  carry.  But 
for  students  seriously  to  shoulder  all 
these  problems  at  once,  shows  both 
courage  and  naivete,  but  little  discre- 
tion. Did  they  know  that  Sorolla  him- 
self worked  for  twenty-five  years  at  the 
problem  before  he  painted  his  first 
successful  out-door  canvas,  they  would 
perhaps  attack  it  with  less  enthusiasm. 
But  courage  is  an  admirable  thing,  and 
it  seems  a  shame  to  put  obstacles  in  its 
path. 

I  have  said  that  Holbein  and   Leo- 
nardo da  Vinci  were  probably  two  of  the 

[86] 


DRAWING 

greatest  draughtsmen  the  world  has 
ever  seen,  stating  at  the  same  time  that 
the  character  of  their  work  precluded 
the  possibility  of  really  good  painting 
as  we  moderns  conceive  it.  Depending 
as  it  does  for  its  distinction  upon 
extreme  delicacy  and  finesse  of  line, 
free  and  vibrant  brush-work  was  of 
course  not  possible.  There,  fortunately, 
is  another  and  larger  manner  of  draw- 
ing which  is  peculiarly  fitted  for  the 
true  painter's  use.  This  is  drawing 
by  mass,  as  it  is  seen  in  the  work  of 
J.  F.  Millet,  Winslow  Homer,  and  the 
French  landscapist  Harpignies.  As 
landscape  art  in  its  highest  expression 
is  a  synthetic  grouping  of  masses  of 
delicate  and  beautiful  color,  this  kind 
of  drawing  is  that  which  is  made  for 
the  landscape  painter's  special  needs. 
It  allows  full  scope  for  the  true  rend- 
ering of  character  in  all  the  principal 

{87] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

forms,  and  at  the  same  time  it  lends  it- 
self to  the  large  and  noble  vision — for, 
even  in  drawing,  the  true  painter  must 
always  see  big.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
he  must  "grab  the  essential"  and  cast 
the  little  and  the  inessential  behind 
him. 


(88) 


VII 
COMPOSITION 

THERE  are  so  many  millions  of  good 
compositions  in  the  world  that  it  seems 
strange  any  one  should  ever  waste  time 
on  a  bad  one.  The  good  ones  lie  about 
us  at  every  turn  of  the  road.  All 
that  is  necessary  is  the  eye  to  see  them. 
There  are  no  fixed  and  immutable  laws 
of  composition — at  least,  none  that  can- 
not frequently  be  broken  to  advantage 
by  a  man  of  genius.  All  of  the  old  con- 
ventional rules  are  explanatory  rather 
than  constructive.  They  may  prevent 
an  utterly  bad  arrangement,  but  they 
can  hardly  enable  us  to  create  a  master- 
piece; for  the  all-essential  note  of  per- 
sonality would  be  absent.  In  my  own 

[89] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

opinion,  about  all  of  the  rules  of  com- 
position which  are  of  any  practical  value 
to  a  painter,  are  negative  rather  than 
positive,  and  can  best  be  expressed  in  a 
series  of  "don'ts." 

The  first  and  by  far  the  most  impor- 
tant of  these  is,  "don't  try  to  say  two 
things  on  one  canvas."  Any  motive  that 
is  worth  painting  must  have  a  central 
point  of  interest.  Concentrate  on  that 
and  sacrifice  everything  else  to  it.  If 
there  chance  to  be  another  attractive 
feature  in  the  same  subject,  ruthlessly 
suppress  it,  in  order  that  the  one  thing 
which  you  have  to  say  may  be  said 
strongly.  It  often  happens  in  nature 
that  there  are  two  points  of  nearly  equal 
interest  in  the  same  scene.  In  this  case 
divide  the  motive  into  two  separate  pic- 
tures, or  else  paint  some  other  motive. 
If  you  try  to  paint  both  on  the  same 
canvas  you  will  fall  between  two  stools; 

[90] 


OH 

a 


S     « 


t£     >> 


COMPOSITION 

for  the  human  mind  is  capable  of 
receiving  but  one  impression  at  a  time. 
An  instance  of  this  double  motive 
which  recurs  constantly  in  nature  is 
the  scene  where  some  handsome  land- 
scape is  reflected  in  a  pool  or  stream, 
the  reflection  being  often  more  beauti- 
ful than  the  scene  which  it  reflects.  It 
would  be  fatal  to  attempt  to  reproduce 
both  in  one  picture.  The  eye  of  the 
spectator  would  not  know  upon  which 
of  the  two  pictures  to  rest  and  neither 
would  make  its  full  impression. 
An  excellent  example  of  the  correct 
way  to  treat  this  motive  is  to  be  found 
in  the  river  views  of  the  Norwegian 
painter,  Fritz  Thaulow,  who  never  gives 
more  of  the  landscape  itself  than  a 
suggestion  at  the  top  of  the  picture, 
thus  concentrating  the  attention  on  the 
beautiful  swirling  expanse  of  water  be- 
low. The  water  itself  tells  all  that  is 

[91] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

needful  of  the  thing  it  reflects,  and  the 
attention  is  not  distracted  in  the  effort 
to  see  two  things  at  once. 

I  have  seen  many  a  poor  picture  in 
which  two  very  excellent  pictures  had 
been  painted  upon  the  same  canvas, 
either  of  which  would  have  been  beau- 
tiful by  itself.  If  you  wish  your  message 
to  carry,  don't  confuse  your  audience 
with  irrelevancies.  Make  your  single 
statement  clear  and  forceful  and  con- 
vincing— and  let  it  stand  by  itself.  Don't 
try  to  give  too  much  for  the  money. 
This  is  even  a  worse  mistake  in  art 
than  it  is  in  business. 

Secondly.  "Don't  divide  your  picture 
into  spaces  of  equal  size  and  propor- 
tion." For  some  psychological  reason  of 
which  we  have  not  the  explanation,  the 
human  mind  abhors  an  equal  division 
of  space  in  a  picture.  Therefore  don't 
put  either  your  horizon  line  or  your 

[92] 


COMPOSITION 

principal  object  of  interest  in  the  exact 
centre  of  the  canvas.  How  far  above  or 
how  far  below,  the  centre  the  horizon 
should  be  placed,  will  of  course  de- 
pend upon  the  character  of  the  motive 
and  its  various  units.  Unless  there  is 
some  very  convincing  reason  for  the 
high  horizon,  however,  all  experience 
points  to  the  lower  division  as  best. 
A  vast  sky  always  lends  nobility  to  a 
picture ;  while  the  suppression  or  nearly 
total  elimination  of  the  sky  tends  to 
convert  the  canvas  into  a  sort  of  tran- 
scendent still-life.  This  is  the  case  with 
the  water  pictures  of  Thaulow.  They 
are  the  very  apotheosis  of  still-life,  it  is 
true,  but  they  are  held  within  the  still- 
life  class  by  the  fact  that  they  are  a 
representation  of  near-by  objects,  that 
they  make  no  appeal  to  the  infinite — 
translate  no  mood  or  effect. 
The  low  horizon  line  is  peculiarly  es- 

[93] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

sential  when  the  principal  motive  of 
the  picture  is  found  in  the  sky  itself — 
some  vast  composition  of  rolling  clouds, 
some  gorgeous  sunburst  radiating  its 
luminous  streamers  athwart  the  canvas, 
some  castle  in  the  air  towering  up  and 
up  to  the  zenith.  In  this  case,  a  mere 
line  of  land  is  often  sufficient — enough 
to  give  the  dark  and  solid  value  that 
lends  light  and  air  to  the  upper  reaches 
of  the  sky. 

"Don't  have  anything  in  the  picture 
which  does  not  explain  itself."  Because 
a  thing  happens  to  exist  in  nature 
is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  allowed 
a  place  in  your  picture — which  is  a 
work  of  art.  Treat  nature  with  respect 
and  affection,  but  don't  let  her  rule 
you.  And,  moreover,  don't  paint  any 
motive  that  is  so  unusual  and  outre 
that  it  will  not  explain  itself  without 
a  pamphlet  attached  to  the  frame.  I 

[94] 


COMPOSITION 

once  asked  Mr.  Lhermitte,  the  veteran 
French  master,  what  he  proposed  to 
call  an  important  picture  which  he  had 
just  then  completed  for  the  Salon.  "I 
don't  know,"  he  replied.  "A  picture 
which  needs  a  title  should  never  have 
been  painted.  What  would  you  call  it 
yourself  ?"  We  had  best  not  poach  upon 
the  preserves  of  the  story-teller,  be- 
cause he  can  always  beat  us  at  his  own 
game.  No  beauty  was  added  to  a  certain 
picture  of  the  Cornish  coast  which  I  once 
saw  in  the  Royal  Academy,  by  the  fact 
that  it  was  entitled  "Where  the  Phoe- 
nicians came  for  tin." 

"Don't  repeat  the  main  line  of  your 
picture  with  another  important  line 
parallel  to  it."  If  you  have  a  mountain 
form  swinging  up  to  the  left,  have  your 
clouds  swing  up  to  the  right;  or  tend  in 
that  direction.  If  you  are  painting  in 
a  flat  country  like  Holland,  and  your 

[95] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

horizon  line  is  forcedly  horizontal,  make 
this  straight  line  beautiful  by  adjusting 
the  cloud  forms  to  it  in  agreeable  con- 
trast. The  sky  is  in  this  respect  a  won- 
derful resource  to  the  painter,  for  its 
lines  may  sweep  in  any  one  of  an  hun- 
dred different  directions;  and  they  can 
thus  always  be  made  to  balance  or 
accentuate  or  modify  the  lines  of  the 
solid  earth,  which  cannot  change. 

Above  all,  "don't  let  the  dominant 
line  of  your  picture  end  aimlessly  in 
mid-air."  With  the  sky  to  help,  there  is 
no  excuse  for  this.  It  should  be  picked 
up  and  carried  on  in  a  sinuous,  living 
line,  like  the  sweep  of  a  winding  brook 
or  the  curve  of  a  mountain  road.  The 
psychological  effect  of  this  living  line 
in  a  picture  is  one  of  the  most  potent, 
though  one  of  the  most  mysterious, 
things  in  art. 

As  I  have  already  said,  however,  there 

f96] 


COMPOSITION 

is  not  one  of  these  rules,  nor  one  of  the 
old  conventional  tenets,  that  cannot  oc- 
casionally be  disregarded  to  advantage. 
No!  in  this  I  am  mistaken.  There  is 
one  rule  at  least  which  must  never 
be  broken — the  rule  which  says  "thou 
shalt  not  paint  two  pictures  upon  one 
canvas";  for  the  house  which  is  divided 
against  itself  inevitably  falls  to  the 
ground. 

But  I  have  seen  an  excellent  picture  in 
which  the  horizon  line  bisected  the  can- 
vas exactly  in  the  centre — the  necessary 
balance  being  achieved  by  other  means. 
I  have  also  seen  pictures  in  which  the 
repetition  of  the  dominant  line  added  a 
strange  beauty  to  the  canvas. 

"  Don't  crowd  your  composition."  Let 
your  tree  or  your  mountain  have  breath- 
ing space.  Keep  them  away  from  the 
edge  of  the  frame.  They  will  gain  in 
dignity  and  apparent  bigness  by  di- 
[97] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

minishing  rather  than  increasing  their 
proportions. 

"Don't  put  in  a  single  unnecessary 
feature."  Everything  which  does  not 
contribute  to  the  grace,  or  the  beauty, 
or  the  force,  or  the  sentiment  of  your 
picture  detracts  from  it. 

But  unquestionably  the  best  rule  of  all 
is  to  keep  the  eyes  always  wide  open  and 
observant  of  the  things  about  you,  for 
the  most  beautiful  compositions  in  the 
world  are  always  the  daring  and  un- 
expected arrangements  of  nature.  It 
behooves  us  to  see  them. 


[98] 


VIII 
QUALITY 

THE  Belgian  master,  Alfred  Stevens, 
was  wont  to  say  that  a  picture  in  order 
to  be  truly  great  must  excel  from  two 
different  points  of  view.  When  seen 
from  a  distance  it  must  be  handsome  in 
color,  fine  in  composition,  and  true  to 
the  scene  depicted ;  and  when  examined 
at  close  range  the  pigment  must  reveal 
that  precious  and  jewel-like  surface 
which  is  described  by  the  word  "qual- 

ity." 

Jean  Fra^ois  Millet,  on  the  contrary, 
abhorred  quality,  and  vehemently  pro- 
tested that  any  painter  who  concerned 
himself  with  surface  prettiness  was 
little  better  than  an  artisan — at  best  a 

[99] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

jeweler  out  of  his  element.  Personally, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  both  of 
these  great  masters  were  in  the  wrong, 
but  that  Millet  came  nearer  to  the  truth 
than  Stevens.  It  is  quite  certain,  at  any 
rate,  that  his  instinct  was  correct  in  so 
far  as  it  applied  to  his  own  work.  Pre- 
ciosity of  surface  could  only  detract 
from  such  a  picture  as  the  "Sower"  or 
the  "Shepherdess,"  while  it  would  be  a 
positive  offence  in  a  picture  such  as 
the  "Man  with  a  Hoe,"  Millet,  of 
course,  was  too  great  and  true  an  artist 
to  fall  into  this  error.  His  pictures  give 
evidence  of  an  infallible  instinct  for  the 
eternal  fitness  of  things,  and  as  he  was 
concerned  always  with  the  thing  to  be 
said,  he  used  every  resource  at  his  com- 
mand to  reinforce  the  dominant  idea 
of  the  work,  suppressing  every  thing 
which  might  distract  the  attention  from 
the  central  motive.  The  epic  of  labor 

[100] 


QUALITY 

was  his  message;  and  the  coarse  and 
often  repellent  surface  texture  of  his 
pictures  was  in  absolute  harmony  with 
the  character  of  his  subjects.  These, 
while  not  precisely  tragic,  were  invari- 
ably sober  and  serious,  with  the  large 
dignity  of  primitive  things. 

But  the  fact  that  an  enamel-like 
beauty  of  surface  was  not  in  keeping 
with  the  art  of  Millet  is  no  valid  proof 
that  it  has  not  a  legitimate  place  of 
its  own  in  painting.  Indeed,  the  whole 
question  of  the  relative  value  of  things 
in  art  is  here  involved.  The  time  is  no 
longer  when  the  figure  painter  can  look 
down  upon  the  landscape  painter,  when 
the  painter  of  vast  historical  composi- 
tions has  his  special  place  reserved  for 
him  at  the  head  of  the  board,  while  the 
painter  of  mere  portraits  must  be  con- 
tent with  a  seat  below  the  salt.  It  is  the 
intrinsic  beauty  of  the  work  itself  that 

[101] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

decides  its  value,  and  neither  the  size 
of  the  canvas  nor  the  character  of  the 
subject  counts.  A  portrait  by  Velasquez, 
a  landscape  by  Corot,  or  a  tiny  still- 
life  by  Chardin  may  very  well  be  worth 
a  dozen  great  figure  compositions  by 
Le  Brun  or  Van  Loo.  To  withhold 
praise  therefore  from  one  of  the  be- 
wilderingly  beautiful  pipe-dreams  of 
Monticelli  would  be  to  deny  the  value 
of  all  the  decorative  art  in  the  world; 
to  say  that  the  mere  sensuous  beauty 
of  the  flower  or  of  the  peacock's  feather 
has  no  value  because  it  delivers  no 
intellectual  message;  to  brush  aside  as 
worthless  the  keramic  art  of  Japan,  the 
textiles  of  Persia,  and  the  cathedral 
glass  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

But  just  as  we  should  deprecate  the 
presence  of  a  precious  surface  quality 
in  one  of  Millet's  noble  and  homely  can- 
vases, so  we  should  resent  any  attempt 

[102] 


QUALITY 

at  a  didactic  or  serious  message  in  a 
picture  by  Monticelli  or  Watteau.  And 
herein  lies  the  mistake  of  Alfred  Ste- 
vens. Throughout  all  the  ages  the  great 
masters  have  been  content  to  say  but 
one  thing  upon  one  canvas;  to  subor- 
dinate everything  else  in  the  picture  to 
the  one  dominant  idea,  and  to  eliminate 
everything  which  does  not  contribute  to 
reinforce  it.  As  I  have  already  said  in 
the  chapter  on  Composition,  any  at- 
tempt to  convey  two  ideas  at  one  and 
the  same  time  leads  to  inevitable  con- 
fusion. Each  idea  may  be  beautiful  in 
itself,  but  the  beauty  of  one  will  nullify 
the  beauty  of  the  other.  Indeed,  the 
fact  that  a  secondary  idea  in  a  picture  is 
especially  interesting  is  the  strongest  ar- 
gument for  its  suppression.  If  the  idea 
is  of  sufficient  beauty  it  deserves  a  can- 
vas by  itself,  and  should  be  reserved  for 
another  picture  to  be  painted  later  on. 

[103] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Of  the  works  of  Monticelli,  Watteau, 
Gaston  La  Touche,  and  their  fellows, 
we  therefore  ask  no  more  than  they 
have  given  us.  We  are  content  to  satu- 
rate our  souls  in  their  sensuous  loveli- 
ness; to  take  deep  draughts  of  this  in- 
toxicating wine  of  beauty  and  to  dream 
the  day  away.  We  do  not  say  that  their 
work  is  greater  or  less  great  than  that 
of  Millet  or  Winslow  Homer  or  the 
other  master  painters  of  humanity.  We 
only  say  that  it  is  different,  and  we  are 
glad  that  it  is  as  it  is  and  not  otherwise. 
In  the  garden  of  art  there  are  many 
mansions.  We  love  to  wander  from  one 
to  another  under  the  wide  and  bosky 
shade,  and  are  happy  that  we*  must  not 
dwell  always  in  the  same  palace — be  it 
ever  so  beautiful. 

Now  there  is  no  question  but  that  this 
elusive  and  exquisite  surface  beauty — 
this  so-called  "quality"— is  peculiarly 

[104] 


QUALITY 

at  home  in  some  forms  of  landscape 
art.  Of  this  we  have  indubitable  proof 
in  the  work  of  Claude  and  Turner  and 
in  the  pictures  of  our  own  painters, 
Ranger,  Dearth,  and  Bunce.  One  thing, 
however,  must  not  be  lost  sight  of. 
When  the  picture  is  intended  to  de- 
liver a  message — to  convey  some  poetic 
or  strongly  dramatic  "  mood  "  of  nature, 
the  unreserved  use  of  quality  may  lead 
to  the  pitfall  of  the  double  motive.  But 
when  the  character  of  the  subject  is  quiet 
and  idyllic,  the  sensitive  appreciation  of 
surface  beauty  on  the  part  of  the  artist 
and  his  dexterous  manipulation  of  pig- 
ment to  secure  it  is  not  only  legitimate 
but  practically  mandatory.  Some  of  the 
most  enduring  works  of  beauty  in 
painting  owe  their  charm  almost  wholly 
to  this  one  thing. 

It  is  sometimes  objected  that  there 
are  various  receipts  by  the  use  of  which 

[105] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

quality  can  be  secured  by  the  first- 
comer.  If  this  were  true,  it  would  be 
the  greatest  of  boons  to  the  artistic 
profession.  But,  alas!  the  only  real  re- 
ceipt for  quality  is  to  be  born  a  color ist. 
The  kind  which  is  secured  by  simple 
recourse  to  the  varnish-pot  is  a  sadly 
spurious  article,  which  will  bring  little 
pleasure  to  any  one  with  a  sensitive 
artistic  organization.  Quality  which  is 
obtained  at  the  expense  of  truth  is 
dearly  bought,  and  varnish  in  itself 
does  not  make  art. 

When,  therefore,  I  am  asked  by  stu- 
dents for  the  best  way  to  secure  quality 
in  a  picture,  I  feel  inclined  to  para- 
phrase the  reply  of  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  to  the  reporter  who  asked  him 
the  best  way  to  make  sure  of  a  long 
life.  "  The  best  way,"  said  the  Autocrat, 
"is  to  select  long-lived  parents." 

[106] 


IX 

PIGMENTS 

THE  question  of  the  medium  in  which 
the  painter  shall  execute  his  pictures  is 
an  affair  of  temperament.  Each  artist 
must  consult  his  own  feelings  in  this 
matter  and  select  the  medium  which  is 
to  him  the  most  sympathetic.  To-day, 
there  are  practically  but  three  systems 
of  painting  in  common  use,  tempera 
having  gone  out  of  vogue,  and  fresco 
having  very  wisely  been  discarded  in 
favor  of  better  and  sounder  methods. 
The  three  remaining  methods  are,  of 
course,  pastel,  water-color,  and  oil.  Each 
of  these  has  its  own  special  advantages, 
and  its  countervailing  disadvantages. 
Pastel,  the  most  exquisite  and  fasci- 

[107] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

nating  of  the  three  is  also  technically 
considered  the  most  dangerous.  It  has, 
indeed,  so  many  drawbacks  on  the  ma- 
terial side  that  only  the  most  thoroughly 
trained  technician  is  able  to  avoid  them 
all,  and  thus  assure  to  his  picture  the 
permanence  which  is  a  first  essential 
in  any  work  of  art.  To  begin  with,  it  is 
the  most  fragile  of  materials.  If  a  fixa- 
tive is  used  it  must  be  applied  with  a 
sure  knowledge  of  the  results  to  be  ob- 
tained; for  any  carelessness  or  igno- 
rance of  manipulation  during  this  deli- 
cate process  will  result  in  a  certain  loss 
of  the  surface  bloom — the  quality  which 
more  than  anything  else  gives  to  pastels 
their  exquisite  charm.  This  statement 
applies  more  particularly  to  the  paint- 
ing in  which  the  pastel  is  applied  as  a 
heavy  coat  over  the  whole  surface  of 
the  canvas,  and  in  which,  therefore,  fix- 
ing is  an  absolute  necessity.  When  the 
pastel  is  used  meagrely,  and  the  sur- 

[108] 


PIGMENTS 

plus  pigment  is  thoroughly  shaken  off, 
a  pastel  is  nearly  as  indestructible  as 
any  other  drawing,  and  this  without 
the  use  of  fixatives.  But  the  worst  short- 
coming of  pastel  is  its  tendency  to  fade. 
This  is  unnecessary  and  is  due  solely 
to  carelessness  on  the  part  of  the  man- 
ufacturers. The  remedy,  therefore,  is  to 
patronize  only  the  most  reliable  makers. 
Water-color  has  many  of  the  charms 
of  pastel,  with  practically  no  demerits. 
Its  permanence  is  amply  demonstrated 
by  the  cartoons  of  Raphael  and  Leon- 
ardo, while  it  gives  to  our  work  an  airy 
delicacy  that  can  be  secured  by  no  other 
means.  Its  only  disadvantage  is  also  one 
of  its  chief  attractions — the  element  of 
uncertainty  always  present,  for  the  color 
dries  out  a  tone  lighter  than  the  freshly 
applied  wash,  and  of  course  only  long 
training  enables  one  to  discount  with 
absolute  certainty  this  subtle  change 
of  tone.  However,  we  must  admit  that 

[109] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

its  usefulness  is  limited  to  comparatively 
light  effects,  and  to  pictures  of  moder- 
ate size,  as  it  lacks  the  necessary  depth 
and  power  for  low-toned  pictures  or  for 
canvases  of  large  dimensions.  As  the 
lead  factor  is  not  present  in  water-color 
work,  almost  the  whole  scale  of  pig- 
ments may  be  used  with  impunity  and 
with  reasonable  certainty  of  perma- 
nence. 

But  of  all  the  methods  of  painting  yet 
discovered,  painting  in  oil  is  unques- 
tionably the  most  valuable  and  the 
most  satisfactory  in  its  general  results. 
The  range  of  its  power  is  only  limited 
to  the  power  of  the  pigments  at  our 
command ;  and  its  permanence  depends 
only  on  our  care  in  the  selection  of 
these  pigments.  In  this  respect,  how- 
ever, it  must  be  admitted  that  our 
palette  is  still  far  from  ideal. 

That  in  this  age  of  chemical  conquest 

[110] 


PIGMENTS 

we  should  still  be  using  the  sixteenth 
century  colors;  still  be  forced  to  pick 
and  choose  our  pigments  in  the  con- 
stant fear  of  chemical  change,  is  a 
pointed  comment  on  the  intelligence  of 
the  artist  fraternity.  Had  painters  been 
able  to  combine  in  a  united  demand, 
they  would  long  ago  have  had  a  palette 
as  brilliant  as  the  rainbow  and  as  endur- 
ing as  the  pyramids.  They  ask  no  im- 
possibility. Indeed,  the  solution  of  this 
problem  would  be  a  comparatively 
simple  matter  for  the  modern  chemist,  a 
mere  nothing  in  comparison  with  the 
prodigies  that  have  been  wrought  in 
the  domain  of  steel  and  in  the  field  of 
electricity.  But  alas!  from  the  very 
nature  of  things,  concerted  action  was 
impossible.  The  artist  is  a  hopeless 
individualist.  Were  he  able  to  sink  his 
individuality  in  any  merger,  he  would 
no  longer  be  an  artist.  I  have  in  mind 
[in] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

a  dinner  given  by  a  benevolent  lover 
of  art  and  artists,  to  which  a  dozen 
prominent  painters  were  bidden,  that 
they  might  explain  their  needs  to  an 
eminent  chemist  who  was  the  guest  of 
the  evening.  I  shall  not  soon  forget  the 
bewilderment  of  the  man  of  science 
at  the  end  of  the  conference.  In  less 
than  an  hour  he  had  received  a  dozen 
widely  varying  accounts  of  the  needs  of 
the  profession,  each  one  describing  the 
special  and  individual  needs  of  a  special 
painter.  Moreover,  the  discussion  was 
so  filled  with  gay  and  reckless  persi- 
flage, so  shot  through  with  wit  and 
repartee,  that  it  was  hopeless  to  attempt 
to  separate  the  light  from  the  serious. 
It  was  a  very  gay  party,  but  it  advanced 
little  the  cause  of  sound  color. 

If,  therefore,  artists  are  ever  to  secure 
the  pigments  which  they  need,  the 
demand  must  come  from  some  alien 

[112] 


PIGMENTS 

source.  Fortunately,  this  demand  has 
already  arisen.  The  manufacturers  of 
print  goods  all  over  the  world  are  in- 
tisting  upon  pigments  which  will  re- 
main permanent  under  the  strong  rays 
of  the  tropical  sun,  and  which  will  at 
the  same  time  resist  the  action  of  the 
various  alkalies  and  acids  they  are  sure 
to  encounter  in  the  wash-tub.  To  meet 
this  demand  one  great  firm  of  color- 
makers  has  a  hundred  expert  chemists 
employed  upon  the  problem.  Already 
they  have  achieved  one  definite  and 
splendid  result — a  synthetic  red  which 
is  absolutely  neutral,  chemically  con- 
sidered, and  ten  times  more  powerful 
than  the  best  vermilion.  As  an  artist's 
color,  it  replaces  almost  all  the  other 
red  pigments  which  we  have  inherited 
from  the  past.  The  same  chemists  have 
an  equally  powerful  yellow  and  blue 
under  careful  observation,  and  it  is 

[113] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

highly  probable  that  in  another  year  or 
two  these,  also,  will  be  given  to  the 
world.  Now  it  is  evident  that  if  painters 
can  secure  these  three  primary  colors 
in  two  values,  a  light  and  a  dark  shade, 
they  will,  with  the  addition  of  white  and 
black,  have  a  perfect  palette;  as  all  of 
the  secondary  and  tertiary  colors,  such 
as  orange,  green,  violet,  and  their  vari- 
ous derivatives  can  be  compounded  by 
an  admixture  of  these  original  pigments. 
But  while  we  may  hope  for  the  com- 
pletion of  the  new  color-scale,  it  would 
be  foolish  prematurely  to  assume  it  as 
assured.  In  the  meantime,  we  must  act 
as  if  we  were  always  to  be  dependent 
upon  the  old  hereditary  palette.  That 
splendid  and  durable  results  can  be 
secured  through  its  use  is  amply  proved 
by  the  superb  examples  of  the  old 
masters  which  have  come  down  to  us 
in  a  perfect  state  of  preservation.  All 

[114] 


PIGMENTS 

that  is  required  is  a  little  care  and  in- 
telligence in  the  selection  of  the  pig- 
ments. Lead  is  the  one  dangerous  fac- 
tor. If  we  were  willing  to  take  from 
the  palette  the  white  lead  and  the 
chromes,  which  have  also  a  lead  basis, 
we  could  use  almost  all  the  other  pig- 
ments with  impunity.  But  our  only 
substitute  for  white  lead  is  zinc  white, 
which  has  the  disadvantage  of  being 
so  extremely  brittle  when  hard-dry, 
that  it  cracks  when  the  canvas  is 
rolled,  or  under  the  action  of  extremes 
of  heat  and  cold.  The  danger  from 
lead  is  its  strong  affinity  for  sulphur, 
and  the  unfortunate  fact  that  sulphide 
of  lead  is  a  blackish  brown.  There- 
fore when  any  of  the  colors  containing 
sulphur  (such  as  vermilion  and  the 
cadmiums)  are  mixed  with  either  white 
lead  or  the  chromes,  we  are  sure  to 
evolve  the  deadly  sulphide,  and  there 

[115] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

results  a  general  browning  or  greening 
of  the  whole  picture. 

The  rule,  then,  is  either  to  content 
ourselves  with  zinc  white,  or,  if  white 
lead  is  used,  to  cast  aside  the  cadmiums, 
vermilion,  and  emerald  green  (which, 
having  a  copper  basis,  is  also  subject 
to  change  when  brought  into  contact 
with  sulphur).  The  vermilion,  fortu- 
nately, has  now  been  replaced  by  the 
new  color  (which  has  been  named  by  its 
makers  Harrison  red) ;  and  the  cad- 
miums are  hardly  necessary,  as  they 
can  be  replaced  by  the  chromes.  Thus, 
with  either  lead  white  or  zinc  white, 
we  have  a  very  extended  range,  which 
has  been  greatly  strengthened  of  late 
years  by  the  addition  of  the  two  superb 
and  perfectly  safe  alizarine  colors, 
the  scarlet  and  the  crimson  varieties. 
Neither  the  yellow  nor  the  green  aliz- 
arine can  yet  be  claimed  as  perfectly 

[116] 


PIGMENTS 

sound  and  enduring ;  but  then  neither 
is  essential. 

Now,  with  this  list  of  twenty  or  thirty 
pigments  to  select  from,  the  question 
arises,  naturally,  as  to  the  choice  we 
shall  make  from  them ;  for  it  is  evident, 
I  think,  that  even  the  most  courageous 
amateur  would  hardly  venture  upon 
the  whole  gamut  at  one  time.  In  the 
first  place,  it  may  be  said  that  choice 
of  palette  is  a  matter  of  temperament. 
Each  student  must  experiment  with 
the  various  pigments  and  select  those 
which  he  personally  finds  most  sym- 
pathetic. But,  in  general,  it  is  best  to 
eliminate  all  the  secondary  or  com- 
pound colors,  such  as  green,  purple, 
etc.;  and  this  for  two  reasons:  first, 
because  a  painter  secures  more  vibra- 
tion in  his  work  by  mixing  his  own 
secondary  and  tertiary  tones;  and, 
second,  because  if  one  has  a  green  on 

[117] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

the  palette,  one  is  very  apt  to  use  that 
special  green,  instead  of  searching  out 
the  various  greens  (and  they  are  in- 
finite) that  may  enter  into  his  picture 
motive.  It  may  also  be  stated  as  an 
axiom,  that  the  more  experienced  the 
artist,  the  more  limited  is  his  palette. 
The  expert  cannot  be  bothered  with 
useless  pigments.  He  selects  the  few 
that  are  really  essential  and  throws 
aside  the  rest  as  useless  lumber.  The 
distinguished  Swedish  artist,  Zorn,  uses 
but  two  colors — vermilion  and  yel- 
low ochre;  his  two  other  pigments, 
black  and  white,  being  the  negation 
of  color.  With  this  palette,  simple 
to  the  point  of  poverty,  he  neverthe- 
less finds  it  possible  to  paint  an  im- 
mense variety  of  landscape  and  figure 
subjects,  and  I  have  never  heard  his 
color  criticised  as  being  anaemic  or  lack- 
ing in  power.  Many  other  painters 

[118] 


PIGMENTS 

limit  themselves  to  five  colors;  and 
when  the  palette  is  extended  beyond 
seven,  it  is  safe  to  presume  that  one  is 
skirting  the  borders  either  of  the  ama- 
teur or  the  student  class. 

So  much  for  pigments.  But  now  we 
are  confronted  with  another  and  a  still 
more  difficult  problem:  that  of  the  me- 
dium in  which  the  colors  are  to  be 
mixed.  For  this  purpose  nothing  better 
than  pure  linseed  oil  has  ever  been 
discovered,  and  indeed  nothing  better 
could  be  desired ;  for  it  combines  nearly 
all  of  the  good  qualities — transparency, 
hardness,  a  certain  flexibility  when  dry, 
and  a  durability  whose  limits  we  are 
as  yet  unable  to  gauge — the  first  pict- 
ures ever  painted  in  oil  colors  being 
still  in  a  good  state  of  preservation. 
Unfortunately  it  has  now  become  very 
difficult  to  obtain  pure  linseed  oil. 
Most  of  the  oil  of  the  world  is  at 

[119] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

present  extractd  by  the  oil  trust,  which, 
in  order  to  secure  a  slightly  increased 
output,  subjects  the  seed  under  pres- 
sure to  a  high  heat,  with  the  result 
that  in  addition  to  the  oil  there  is 
pressed  out  of  the  mash  a  variety  of 
resins  and  essential  oils,  whose  ulti- 
mate chemical  effect  on  our  colors  we 
cannot  as  yet  determine.  Finally,  the 
whole  output  is  boiled  with  a  certain 
addition  of  litharge  to  help  its  drying 
quality,  and  litharge  is  red  lead.  So 
here  the  lead  equation  enters  into  our 
palette  again,  in  spite  of  our  best  ef- 
forts to  exclude  it.  There  are,  however, 
I  believe,  two  color-men  in  the  world 
who,  recognizing  the  necessity  of  pure 
raw  oil  for  artist's  use,  have  recently  es* 
tablished  plants  of  their  own,  where  the 
seed  is  pressed  cold  and  the  oil  is  left  raw. 
These  firms  are  Bloch  and  Winsor  & 
Newton.  There  may,  of  course,  be 

[120] 


PIGMENTS 

others  of  which  I  do  not  know.  To 
ensure  entire  safety  and  durability, 
nothing  but  pure  linseed  oil  should  be 
mixed  with  the  colors;  all  cracking, 
gumming,  etc.,  being  due  to  inequalities 
in  the  drying  period  of  the  different 
mediums  used  on  our  canvas.  If  any- 
thing at  all  is  mixed  with  the  oil,  the 
safest  and  best  thing  in  the  world  is 
certainly  pure  Venice  turpentine.  If 
kerosene  is  used,  it  should  be  care- 
fully washed  to  eliminate  all  of  the 
acid  which  is  used  in  refining  the 
crude  oil.  Otherwise  this  free  acid  will 
attack  the  lead  and  discolor  it. 

In  regard  to  varnishing,  the  important 
thing  is  to  allow  the  picture  to  dry 
thoroughly  before  the  varnish  is  ap- 
plied. Six  months  is  none  too  much  for 
this,  and  a  year  is  far  better.  A  picture 
varnished  before  the  oil  is  hard-dry  is 
certain  to  crack  sooner  or  later,  as  the 

[121] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

oil  and  the  varnish  dry  at  different  rates 
of  speed.  The  pictures  of  Rubens  and 
Vandyke  were  varnished  with  a  medium 
made  by  exposing  pure  linseed  oil  to  the 
sunlight  until  it  was  quite  thick.  This 
required  a  month  or  two  to  dry  thor- 
oughly after  it  was  applied  to  the  pict- 
ure; but  the  splendid  preservation  and 
the  great  brilliancy  of  Rubens's  pict- 
ures have  justified  all  the  extra  pains 
and  trouble  incident  to  the  method 
which  he  employed. 


[128] 


ON  FRAMING  PICTURES 

A  PICTURE  is  a  convention — an  illu- 
sion. We  take  a  few  crude  materials,  a 
square  of  canvas,  some  earthy  pig- 
ments, and  by  a  sort  of  artistic  legerde- 
main we  propose  to  make  those  ma- 
terials disappear  and  to  persuade  the 
spectator  that  he  is  looking  through  the 
frame  and  out  over  the  sunny  landscape 
beyond.  If  the  magician  is  clever  enough, 
if  he  observes  carefully  the  laws  of 
color,  of  values,  and  of  refraction,  he 
may  succeed  fairly  well.  But  the  slight- 
est thing  will  break  the  spell.  A  scratch 
across  the  sky,  a  little  indentation,  and 
the  illusion  disappears;  for  the  observer 
has  become  conscious  of  the  surface  of 
the  canvas.  The  rough  edge  of  the 

[123] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

stretcher  has  the  same  disillusioning 
effect,  and  for  this  reason  no  picture  is 
really  complete  until  it  is  enclosed  with- 
in the  sheltering  protection  of  a  frame. 
It  is  necessary  to  separate  the  real  from 
the  unreal,  the  hard  reality  of  the  back- 
ground of  burlap  or  of  wall-paper  from 
the  illusion  of  the  picture. 

Now  the  question  at  once  arises  as  to 
the  best  form  for  this  protecting  bar- 
rier, the  best  material  to  use  in  its 
construction,  and  the  best  and  most 
harmonious  surface  for  its  finish.  Ar- 
tists are  all  aware  of  the  vital  im- 
portance of  this  matter.  They  know 
that  a  frame  can  either  make  or  mar 
their  picture,  and  they  give  the  subject 
constant  thought  and  attention.  At  one 
period  I  devoted  considerable  time 
and  study  to  the  question  and  made 
voyages  of  discovery  into  many  strange 
and  untried  fields. 

[124] 


ON  FRAMING  PICTURES 

Of  course  I  tried  frames  of  carved 
wood  of  various  hues  and  varied  de- 
sign ;  I  collected  sea-shells  and  fish-nets, 
poppy-stalks,  ears  of  grain,  and  all 
sorts  of  beautiful  dried  weeds  out  of 
the  fields,  which  I  glued  to  the  flat  sur- 
face of  my  frames,  and  gilded.  I  made 
experiments  also  with  textile  fabrics 
applied  between  narrow  bands  of 
gold.  At  one  time  I  cut  up  a  superb 
Turkish  rug  and  made  me  a  precious 
frame  of  this  exquisite  material.  Bar- 
barous vandalism,  if  you  will,  but  all 
in  the  good  cause  of  art.  However,  that 
was  the  most  disastrous  frame  of  all. 
The  rug  was  so  beautiful  that  the  un- 
fortunate picture  was  entirely  anni- 
hilated. The  surface  texture  of  the  rug 
was  in  itself  so  compelling  that  no  pict- 
ure could  stand  up  against  it.  It  was 
this  frame,  however,  which  first  showed 
me  that  I  was  on  the  wrong  track.  All 

[125] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

of  my  shells  and  nets  and  weeds,  al- 
though gilded,  were  actual  objects,  with 
which  the  eye  was  familiar.  The  ob- 
server as  a  consequence  saw  the  frame 
when  it  was  essential  that  he  should 
see  only  the  picture.  The  frame,  I  per- 
ceived at  last,  must  be  something  mid- 
way between  the  real  and  the  unreal — 
conventional  in  form  and  intangible  in 
surface.  And  I  re-discovered  the  fact, 
which  the  old  masters  had  discovered 
so  many  centuries  ago,  that  there  was 
no  material  in  the  whole  range  of  nat- 
ure so  admirably  fitted  for  the  surface 
of  a  frame  as  gold  or  metal  leaf.  Next 
to  the  mirror,  it  presents  the  most  elu- 
sive of  all  surfaces.  Semi-reflecting, 
semi-solid,  it  is  just  the  thing  that  fills 
all  the  requirements.  So  I  came  back 
home  again  and  spent  the  rest  of  my 
time  in  a  study  of  the  best  forms  and 
the  best  tones  of  metal  leaf  to  be  em- 

[126] 


ON  FRAMING  PICTURES 

ployed.  Fortunately,  there  is  a  large 
range  of  colors  at  our  disposal,  be- 
ginning with  pure  silver,  and  going 
through  various  tints  of  green,  yellow, 
and  orange  gold  to  the  deep  red  of 
copper — a  gamut  as  extended  as  the 
most  demanding  painter  could  ask. 

Here  it  soon  became  apparent  that  the 
law  of  complementaries  reigned  su- 
preme. A  picture  whose  dominant  note 
was  pink  demanded  a  greenish  gold 
frame,  a  blue  picture  called  for  a  tone 
of  pure  yellow  or  orange  gold,  while  a 
picture  whose  dominant  tone  was  gold- 
en yellow  could  only  be  well  clothed  in 
silver.  Fortunately,  the  dominant  note 
of  most  landscapes  is  found  in  the 
blue  or  blue-gray  sky,  and  thus  the  pure 
gold  frame  is  its  ideal  casing.  But  there 
are  pictures — often  enchanting  effects 
— which  are  killed  by  the  juxtaposi- 
tion of  yellow  gold;  and  these  pict- 

[127] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

ures  are  barred  out  of  our  exhibitions 
by  the  barbaric  rule  which  limits  all 
frames  to  those  of  gold  leaf.  One  of  my 
own  most  successful  canvases,  repre- 
senting the  ulterior  of  a  birch  wood  in 
autumn,  was  a  solid  mass  of  shimmer- 
ing yellow  foliage,  relieved  only  by  the 
silvery  notes  of  the  slender  and  graceful 
trees.  I  tried  it,  without  success,  in 
every  possible  tone  of  gold  leaf;  but 
finally  had  to  come  to  silver.  The  pict- 
ure, of  course,  was  "returned  with 
thanks  on  account  of  the  frame";  but 
it  found  an  immediate  purchaser  in  the 
first  private  exhibition  at  which  it  was 
seen.  The  price,  moreover,  had  been 
doubled  as  a  balm  to  my  wounded 
feelings. 

When  it  comes  to  the  form  and  design 
of  a  frame,  infinite  latitude  is  allowable, 
but,  in  general,  the  law  of  contrast  holds 
good  here  also.  A  very  complicated  pict- 

[128] 


ON  FHAMING  PICTURES 

ure  which'  depends  for  its  effect  largely 
upon  some  graceful  and  intricate  de- 
sign will  show  to  best  advantage  in  a 
comparatively  flat  and  simple  frame. 
A  simple  picture,  on  the  contrary,  which 
is  built  up  with  a  few  broad  and 
powerful  masses,  will  frequently  appear 
best  in  a  rich  and  ornamental  frame, 
the  very  richness  of  design  accentuating 
the  simple  beauty  of  the  canvas.  If, 
however,  the  value- scale  of  a  picture 
is  extremely  delicate,  this  must  also 
be  taken  into  account,  and  the  frame, 
though  ornamental  in  design,  should  be 
in  low  relief,  in  order  to  harmonize 
with  the  picture  which  it  is  to  frame. 
The  question  of  the  mat  surface  and  the 
burnished  surface,  or  the  proportion  of 
each  to  be  allowed  in  a  given  frame, 
must  depend  upon  the  special  picture 
under  consideration,  and  also  upon  the 
individual  taste  of  the  painter.  The 

[129] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

worst  frame  of  all,  the  only  inexcusable 
one,  is  the  blatant,  vulgar  over-ornate, 
over-wide,  over-burnished  affair,  which 
cries  out,  "look  at  me,  I  cost  five  hun- 
dred dollars,  so  this  picture  must  be 
worth  five  thousand." 


I  ISO) 


XI 
ON  SCHOOLS 

IF  the  infant  Sargent  or  Whistler  had 
been  marooned  with  a  savage  tribe  and 
brought  up  beyond  the  furthest  confines 
of  civilization,  what  would  their  art 
have  amounted  to?  We  may  presume 
that  they  would  have  carved  the  totem 
pole  just  a  little  more  cleverly  than 
their  savage  mates,  or  have  given  the 
idol's  features  a  twist  more  of  deviltry 
or  of  intelligence.  But  this  would  have 
been  the  limit  of  their  performance,  for 
art  is  the  child  of  time  and  of  precedent. 
It  inherits  the  ages;  but  unless  the  ar- 
tist comes  into  his  inheritance,  he  is 
helpless.  At  best,  can  he  go  but  one 
little  step  beyond  the  fathers,  add  one 
little  stone  to  the  edifice;  and  in  order 

[131] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

to  accomplish  even  this  much,  he  must 
know  well  the  work  of  his  predecessors. 
If  by  some  dreadful  catastrophe  all  the 
art  of  the  world  should  suddenly  be  de- 
stroyed and  all  knowledge  of  it  blotted 
from  the  minds  of  the  survivors,  it 
would  require  ten  thousand  years  for 
humanity  to  recover  the  lost  ground.  As 
an  artist  is  dependent  upon  the  past,  it 
is  evident  that  he  must  strive  to  see  and 
to  study  all  of  the  past  art  that  he  can 
find — to  feed  his  mind  constantly  upon 
it.  In  the  old  days  when  the  painter  was 
a  craftsman — a  little  higher  than  the 
workers  in  iron  or  in  brass,  in  wood,  or 
in  the  precious  metals,  but  still  in  the 
same  category — it  was  customary  to 
apprentice  lads  to  some  well-known 
master.  Velasquez  was  thus  apprenticed 
at  the  age  of  thirteen,  Perugino  at  nine, 
and  Andrea  del  Sarto  at  the  tender  age 
of  seven.  Constantly  under  the  master's 

[132] 


From  a  photograph,  copyright  1906,  by  N.  E.  Montros 


Childe  Hassam — "Brooklyn  Bridge" 


ON  SCHOOLS 

eye,  they  learned  their  craft  much  as  a 
tailor's  apprentice  learns  his  trade. 
When  they  were  not  grinding  colors  or 
stretching  canvas,  or  sweeping  out  the 
studio,  they  were  allowed  to  copy  the 
master's  work  or  possibly  to  fill  in 
backgrounds  for  him,  and  they  received 
his  instruction  in  return  for  their  labors. 
We  do  not  hear  of  anything  resembling 
the  modern  art  school  until  the  time  of 
the  brothers  Carraci;  and  it  thus  hap- 
pens that  the  graduates  of  the  first 
genuine  school  of  art  were  the  painters 
of  the  Italian  Decadence.  There  would 
seem  to  be  a  sinister  significance  in  this 
coincidence — a  significance  which  has 
been  a  facile  argument  in  the  hands  of 
those  who  hold  that  schools  of  art  exert 
a  pernicious  influence  upon  the  student, 
destroying  his  individuality  and  his  per- 
sonal outlook.  They  forget  that  the 
effect  of  the  school  atmosphere  is  a  bag- 

[133] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

atelle  in  comparison  to  the  overwhelm- 
ing influence  of  the  private  master, 
whose  dominant  personality  must  have 
been  felt  at  every  hour  of  the  day  for 
years  at  a  stretch.  The  truth  is  that 
where  an  artist  is  born  with  the  three  es- 
sentials— temperament,  character,  and 
sincerity — it  is  impossible  to  destroy  the 
personal  note  in  him.  Nothing  can  sub- 
merge it.  The  main  thing  is  for  him 
to  acquire  knowledge  and  more  knowl- 
edge and  still  more  knowledge,  and  the 
source  of  his  information  matters  not 
one  whit. 

Personally,  I  am  convinced  that  the 
synchronous  arrival  of  the  art  school 
and  the  Decadence  of  Italian  art  was 
a  mere  coincidence,  and  that  the 
modern  system  of  art  instruction — the 
great  art  school  with  its  corps  of  in- 
ductors— is  a  distinct  improvement 
over  the  ancient  method. 

[134] 


ON  SCHOOLS 

It  will  be  readily  seen  and  understood, 
for  instance,  that,  unless  a  master 
chances  to  be  exceptionally  intelligent, 
he  will  be  apt  to  insist  upon  the  stu- 
dent's using  his  own  palette  and  his 
own  technical  methods,  and  this  will 
delay  the  acquisition  of  the  personal 
color-scale  and  the  personal  technic 
most  fitted  to  the  individual  needs  of 
each  different  student.  This  can  be,  and 
often  is,  corrected  by  the  outside  study 
and  investigations  of  students  them- 
selves, but  it  were  better  that  the  influ- 
ence had  never  been  exerted. 

On  the  whole  it  may  be  said  that  our 
great  schools  both  here  and  abroad  are 
singularly  free  from  this  defect,  and 
that  they  give  to  the  really  serious  stu- 
dent ample  facility  for  a  thorough 
training  in  drawing,  painting,  compo- 
sition, and  all  the  fundamentals  of  art 
as  understood  by  the  great  masters  of 

[135] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

other  times.  The  schools,  however, 
have  in  some  respects  not  kept  pace 
with  the  progress  of  modern  art,  and 
the  student  graduating  from  the  class 
has  still  many  things  to  learn  for  and 
by  himself  before  he  can  put  into  his 
work  the  qualities  which  distinguish  the 
art  of  our  own  times  from  that  of  the 
past.  My  own  experience  of  twenty-five 
years  ago  is  still  very  generally  the  ex- 
perience of  students  leaving  the  schools 
to-day. 

I  left  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,  after 
six  years  of  hard  and  conscientious 
labor,  and  drifted  down  to  Brittany, 
fully  prepared,  as  I  believed,  to  paint 
medal  pictures  for  the  Salon. 

I  gathered  together  a  collection  of 
stunning  subjects,  laid  them  in  bravely, 
and  set  to  work  to  develop  them  into 
pictures,  according  to  the  rules  and 
standards  which  I  had  learned  in  Pari  s. 

[136] 


ON  SCHOOLS 

I  confess  that  I  was  somewhat  surprised 
when,  at  the  end  of  a  year's  work,  I 
had  not  a  single  satisfactory  canvas  to 
show.  At  the  end  of  eighteen  months  I 
began  to  suspect  that  something  was 
radically  wrong,  and  when,  at  the  end 
of  two  years,  I  was  still  without  a 
picture  worthy  of  the  name,  I  became 
genuinely  discouraged. 

About  this  time  I  was  at  work  on  an- 
other huge  "Salon,"  a  canvas  some 
twelve  by  eight  feet  in  dimension,  if  I 
remember  rightly,  which  depicted  the 
interior  of  a  birch  wood  in  autumn,  with 
a  single  figure  of  a  peasant  girl  raking 
up  the  dead  leaves.  The  work  was 
well  toward  completion.  It  was,  I  knew, 
well  drawn,  sound  in  values,  and  at 
least  as  true  and  delicate  in  color  as  the 
average  picture.  It  was  an  honest  en- 
deavor, at  any  rate,  and  my  very  best; 
yet  down  deep  in  my  heart  I  felt  that  it 

[137] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

was  a  failure,  like  all  the  others.  But  the 
heart-breaking  part  of  it  was  that  I  could 
not  guess  why  it  was  a  failure. 

One  day,  as  I  was  painting  away  con- 
scientiously, a  friend  strolled  by — a 
Scandinavian  painter  for  whose  work  I 
had  the  most  profound  admiration. 
After  studying  my  effort  for  awhile  he 
remarked:  "Harrison,  that  thing  of 
yours  is  so  good  it  is  a  pity  it  is  not  a 
d d  sight  better." 

"Well,  for  Heaven's  sake,  U.,"  I  said, 
"tell  me  what  is  the  matter  with  it." 

"  I  am  not  sure  that  I  could  tell  you," 
he  replied,  "but  if  you  will  lend  me 
your  palette  for  ten  minutes  I  might, 
perhaps,  be  able  to  show  you." 

He  selected  an  area  of  eighteen  inches 
in  the  left  centre  of  my  composition, 
and  in  fifteen  minutes  had  entirely 
repainted  it.  His  work,  as  I  studied  it, 
did  not  vary  in  color,  in  tone,  or  in  value 

[138] 


ON  SCHOOLS 

from  the  surrounding  portions  of  the 
picture  which  I  had  painted  myself; 
yet  it  was  as  if  a  window  had  been 
opened  in  the  centre  of  the  canvas. 
U.'s  work  vibrated  and  sparkled  with 
light  and  with  atmosphere,  while  mine 
lay  flat  and  dead.  It  was  also  as  if  a 
window  had  been  opened  in  my  own 
soul.  U.  had  shown  me  the  secret  of 
atmospheric  painting — had  made  clear 
to  me  in  a  single  lucid  demonstration 
the  importance  of  vibration  and  re- 
fraction in  landscape  painting.  I  threw 
aside  the  canvas  upon  which  I  was 
at  work  and  started  another,  which  I 
carried  through  with  such  enthusiasm 
and  verve  as  I  can  never  remember 
having  put  into  another  work — using, 
of  course,  the  new  knowledge  which 
had  come  to  me  so  opportunely. 
This  picture  really  went  to  the  Salon. 
It  was  hung  upon  the  line,  received  a 

[139] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

medal,  and  was  bought  by  the  French 
government  for  one  of  the  national 
museums,  where,  doubtless,  it  still 
hangs. 

I  then  and  there  made  up  my  mind 
that  if  it  ever  came  my  turn  to  instruct 
young  students  I  should  endeavor  to 
teach  them  those  things  for  which  we 
painters  of  the  older  generation  had  to 
grope  blindly  for  years,  unaided  and  in 
the  dark — things  which  are  of  equal 
value  and  importance  in  a  picture  with 
good  drawing,  good  composition,  and 
good  color,  but  which,  for  some  reason, 
have  never  been  taught  in  the  regular 
art  schools. 


[140] 


XII 
THE  ARTS  AND  CRAFTS 

THE  "Free  Art  League  of  America" 
has  recently  printed  an  open  letter,  in 
which  it  congratulates  the  American 
people  on  the  triumph  of  free  art  and 
rejoices  over  the  certitude  that  valuable 
collections  of  old  masterpieces  will  soon 
be  brought  to  this  country,  and  that 
beautiful  carvings,  bronzes,  ivories,  and 
antiques  of  all  descriptions  will  drift 
into  our  museums,  and  into  private 
collections  all  over  the  country.  It  finds 
particular  satisfaction  in  the  fact  that 
these  objects  will  now  be  at  the  service 
of  our  manufacturers  for  use  as  models, 
and  that  as  a  natural  consequence  "all 
of  our  manufactured  products  in  which 

[141] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

design  plays  an  important  part  will  be 
better  able  to  compete  with  those  of 
Europe." 

We  may  indeed  rejoice  if  we  are  at 
last  to  come  into  our  heritage — so  long 
withheld;  if  we  may  hope  soon  to  se- 
cure our  fair  share  of  the  treasures  of 
the  world.  But  if  our  only  use  for  them 
is  to  copy  them,  to  use  them  for  models, 
it  were  better  they  should  remain 
across  the  water.  It  is  certain,  I  think, 
that  America  will  one  day  have  a  school 
of  decorative  art  that  will  win  the 
universal  admiration  of  the  world;  but 
if  this  is  ever  to  happen,  it  will  be 
because  she  has  developed  an  art  that 
is  wholly  her  own ;  an  art  that  is  purely 
American;  an  art  whose  symbols  will 
be  the  American  flora  and  fauna  as 
seen  by  American  eyes  and  felt  through 
the  American  temperament. 

There  is  only  one  path  by  which  an 

[142] 


THE  ARTS  AND  CRAFTS 

individual  or  a  nation  can  hope  to  at- 
tain to  eminence  in  art,  or  even  in  the 
"arts  and  crafts" — and  that  path  al- 
ways leads  direct  to  nature.  We  may 
study  the  antiques,  and  joy  in  them,  and 
fill  our  souls  with  their  beauty,  but  for 
our  inspiration  we  must  ever  hark  back 
to  nature  and  get  as  near  her  heart  as 
ever  we  can.  She  has  a  special  message 
of  beauty  for  every  sincere  questioner, 
and  the  message  she  gives  to  me  will 
differ  from  that  which  she  holds  for  you, 
and  the  message  she  delivers  to  the 
Dutchman  will  not  be  the  same  as  that 
which  she  gives  to  the  Spaniard. 

The  decorative  art  of  the  Japanese  is 
nature  as  the  Japanese  see  it;  the  deco- 
rative art  of  the  Hindoos  is  nature  as 
that  strangely  subtle  and  occult  people 
see  it;  the  decorative  art  of  the  Moors 
was  nature  as  the  Saracens  saw  it;  and 
the  decorative  art  of  America  must  be 

[143] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

nature  as  the  Americans  see  it.  There 
is  no  art  so  synthetic,  so  conventional, 
that  it  does  not  derive  from  nature,  and 
the  difference  between  the  art  of 
Persia  and  the  art  of  Europe  is  the 
mental  and  temperamental  difference 
between  the  Persian  and  the  European. 
This  is  the  foundation  and  explana- 
tion of  all  art,  whatever  period  it  rep- 
resents, or  from  whatever  country  it 
emanates,  and  it  applies  with  equal 
force  to  the  decoration  on  a  porcelain 
jug  or  to  the  greatest  mural  painting 
in  the  world. 

Sincerity!  Sincerity!  that  is  the  key  to 
it  all. 

Of  course  it  was  comparatively  easy 
for  the  Hindoo  or  the  Japanese  or  the 
Persian  to  be  sincere  and  naive  because 
the  arts  of  other  countries  were  un- 
known to  them.  But  our  wider  knowl- 
edge is  no  handicap,  no  disadvantage 

[144] 


to  us  if  we  only  preserve  our  own  in- 
tegrity. 

This  we  must  do  in  absolute  sin- 
cerity and  without  any  mental  reserva- 
tion. Even  in  the  development  of  the 
conventional  forms,  which  are  the  basis 
of  all  decorative  art,  we  cannot  with 
safety  use  the  rules  which  were  in- 
vented and  tabulated  by  the  older 
craftsmen.  We  must  invent  our  own 
systems.  Having  analyzed  our  bird  or 
our  leaf  or  our  flower,  we  must  select 
as  the  groundwork  of  our  conventional 
design  the  particular  form  or  tint  that 
appeals  to  us  as  the  most  beautiful  or 
the  most  graceful  or  fitting;  and  just 
because  we  are  Americans,  just  because 
of  the  mental  difference  between  our- 
selves and  the  men  of  other  nations, 
our  selection  would  be  different  from 
the  selection  made  from  the  same  basic 
elements  by  a  Japanese,  a  Persian,  or  a 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Hindoo,  or  a  Frenchman,  an  English- 
man, or  a  German;  and  in  this  slight 
difference  at  the  beginning  of  things 
lies  the  germ  of  all  that  is  distinctive 
and  characteristic,  and  therefore  of  all 
that  is  truly  beautiful  in  art. 


XIII 
MURAL  PAINTING 

MURAL  painting  occupies  a  position 
alone  and  by  itself,  midway  between 
the  purely  conventional  decoration  and 
the  realistic  easel  picture.  It  must  be 
sufficiently  real  to  tell  its  story;  it  must 
not  be  so  real  as  to  destroy  the  flatness 
and  solidity  of  the  surface  upon  which 
it  is  painted.  Mural  painting,  in  fact, 
must  be  considered  as  an  adjunct  of 
architecture,  and  not  as  a  self-depend- 
ent creation.  First  of  all,  therefore,  it 
must  be  in  harmony  with  the  architect- 
ural scheme  of  the  room  which  it  is 
supposed  to  decorate  and  adorn.  It 
must  not  blatantly  insist  upon  recogni- 
tion, but  must  rather  modestly  invite 

[147] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

the  attention  of  the  gaze  which  has  at 
first  been  occupied  with  the  proportions 
of  the  apartment,  the  hall,  or  the  church 
which  it  helps  to  beautify.  It  is,  in  fact, 
applied  art  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
term.  As  a  mural  painting  must  always 
remain  in  its  original  position,  it  is  pecul- 
iarly dependent  upon  its  surroundings, 
and  the  mural  painter  has  not  only  to 
consider  the  form  and  position  of  the 
space  which  the  picture  is  to  fill,  but  the 
color  of  the  surrounding  walls  and  the 
quantity  and  quality  and  direction  of 
the  light  which  it  will  receive.  In  its 
most  important  aspect,  therefore,  it  is 
the  exact  opposite  of  the  easel  picture; 
for  while  the  easel  picture  must,  first 
of  all,  be  true  to  nature  and  express 
nature's  mood,  the  mural  decoration 
must,  first  of  all,  be  true  to  the  Archi- 
tecture and  express  its  mood.  It  musv, 
in  other  words,  pick  UD  the  scheme 

[148] 


W.  L.  Metcalf — "  Summer  Moonlight " 
By  permission  of  the  Corcoran  Art  Gallery 


MURAL  PAINTING 

where  the  architect  dropped  it,  and 
carry  the  same  motive  to  still  greater 
heights  of  beauty.  Its  first  and  most 
important  function,  therefore,  is  purely 
decorative,  to  fill  and  satisfy  the  eye 
with  a  surface  of  graceful  line  and  sen- 
suous and  beautiful  color.  And  the 
mural  decorator  who  forgets  this  car- 
dinal fact  or  is  temperamentally  inca- 
pable of  working  within  the  prescribed 
limits,  should  devote  himself  to  some 
other  line  of  art.  It  will  be  seen,  there- 
fore, that  the  rigid  and  enforced  condi- 
tions under  which  the  mural  painter 
works  impose  upon  him  great  reserve  in 
his  scale  of  color  and  of  values.  If  he 
were  to  use  the  full  scale  of  either  (or 
anything  approaching  it),  he  would  in- 
evitably produce  the  illusion  of  the 
easel  picture,  which  it  is  essential  to 
avoid.  His  wall  surface  would  appar- 
ently disappear,  and  one  of  the  chief 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

architectural  unities  would  be  violated. 
For  the  same  reason  a  carved  or  gilded 
frame  is  not  allowable  on  any  purely 
mural  decoration,  the  gold  frame  hav- 
ing been  replaced  by  universal  consent 
with  a  decorative  border  painted  upon 
the  flat  surface  of  the  wall,  thus  helping 
rather  than  hindering  the  sense  of  sup- 
port and  solidity  that  must  be  main- 
tained at  all  costs.  It  is  probable  that 
the  more  the  artist  is  willing  to  limit 
his  scale  of  color,  the  more  conventional 
he  makes  it,  the  more  beautiful  will  be 
his  result ;  and  it  is  quite  permissible  to 
doubt  whether  any  of  the  modern  highly 
colored  decorations  have  filled  the  first 
essential  of  mural  art  so  well  as  the 
old-time  tapestry  with  its  limited  scale 
of  gray  greens,  gray  blues,  buffs,  and  yel- 
lows. It  is  quite  certain  at  any  rate 
that  when  Puvis  de  Chavannes  in  his 
decorations  at  the  Sorbonne  and  the 

[150] 


MUKAL  PAINTING 

Pantheon  cut  the  color-scale  and  the 
value-scale  in  half,  we  were  all  con- 
scious of  an  unaccustomed  and  quite 
peculiar  fitness  of  the  means  to  the  end ; 
of  a  truth  that  was  higher  than  the 
truth  of  nature,  because  it  was  the  truth 
of  art. 

But  although  the  color-scale  of  a 
mural  painting  may  be  limited  or  atten- 
uated, it  must  still  remain  true  within  its 
limits.  Even  the  tapestry  is  true  so  far 
as  it  goes.  The  human  eye  would  re- 
pudiate scarlet  grass  or  a  grass-green 
sky.  The  elements  of  the  decoration 
must  come  from  nature  exactly  as  they 
do  in  the  easel  picture,  the  difference 
being  that  in  the  latter  case  the  painter 
accepts  and  utilizes  practically  all  that 
nature  gives  him,  while  the  mural 
painter  takes  from  nature  only  those 
elements  which  will  best  subserve  his 
ends. 

[151] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

It  would,  however,  be  absurd  to  assert 
that  because  the  convention  of  the 
Gobelins,  the  Beauvais,  and  the  Arras 
was  beautiful  and  soul-satisfying,  it 
must  necessarily  be  the  ultima  thule  of 
decorative  art.  It  was  simply  one  good 
form  out  of  hundreds,  many  of  which 
are  yet  to  be  discovered.  The  color- 
schemes  that  could  be  utilized  for  this 
purpose  are  simply  unlimited  in  num- 
ber, and  when  the  demand  arises  it  is 
almost  certain  that  another  convention 
equally  beautiful,  though  different,  will 
appear  right  here  in  our  own  country. 
The  new  conditions  of  life  in  this  new 
civilization  make  it  impossible  that  our 
American  scheme  of  decoration,  when  it 
is  finally  evolved,  should  be  the  same  as 
that  which  grew  out  of  the  life  and  the 
conditions  of  mediaeval  Europe. 

Those  of  our  artists  who  are  foolishly 
occupied  in  copying  or  transposing  the 

[152] 


MURAL  PAINTING 

beautiful  art  of  the  ancients  have  en- 
tered a  blind  alley  which  ends  against 
a  blank  wall.  Imitation  is  the  sincerest 
form  of  flattery,  but  in  art  it  leads  only 
to  a  fall. 

Until  very  recent  years,  almost  all 
important  mural  decorations  were  fig- 
ure compositions  in  which  land- 
scape played  only  a  minor  part  ;  but 
the  trend  of  modern  life  points  clearly 
to  a  time — a  time  in  the  very  near 
future,  I  believe — when  pure  landscape 
will  be  largely  used  in  mural  work. 
We  can  already  point  to  several  im- 
portant and  eminently  successful  at- 
tempts of  this  kind  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  and  there  is  little  reason  to  doubt 
that  this  number  will  be  added  to  rap- 
idly as  the  fitness  of  the  material  for 
the  purpose  is  recognized  and  the 
beauty  and  decorative  quality  of  the 
result  is  seen  and  appreciated. 

[153] 


XIV 
ON  VISION 

VISION!  the  key  to  the  door  of  art;  the 
power  to  see  with  the  eyes  of  the  soul! 
as  necessary  to  the  artist  as  faith  to  the 
true  believer.  We  have  been  talking  of 
color,  vibration,  refraction,  drawing, 
and  so  on — all  so  much  useless  lumber 
if  a  painter  have  not  the  one  divine  gift. 
I  once  knew  an  artist  who  had  all  these 
technical  things  at  his  finger  tips;  he 
was  an  able  draughtsman,  a  strong  col- 
orist,  and  the  difficulties  of  refraction 
and  vibration  were  to  him  a  mere 
bagatelle.  Yet  one  of  his  pictures  was 
like  a  man  without  a  soul — a  verita- 
ble Frankenstein  Monster  of  art — for 
he  lacked  the  artist  vision. 

[1541 


g 

i 

a 


ON  VISION 

Fortunately,  the  true  vision  is  not  a 
rare  endowment.  By  the  grace  of  God 
many  of  us  are  born  with  the  sense  of 
beauty;  and  even  if  we  are  gifted  with 
but  a  tiny  spark,  this  spark  can  be 
fostered  until  it  grows  into  a  clear  and 
luminous  flame  whose  light  will  trans- 
form the  most  commonplace  scene  or 
object  into  a  vision  of  infinite  love- 
liness. If  we  look  always  for  beauty  we 
shall  come  at  last  to  find  it  in  the 
most  unexpected  places  and  under 
many  strange  garbs.  But  the  true 
vision  means  not  only  the  power  to 
see  and  to  recognize  beauty,  but  the 
power  to  see  it  stripped  of  all  vulgar- 
ities and  inessentials;  the  power  to 
see  the  soul  of  the  thing  and  to  grasp 
its  essential  beauty.  For  any  landscape 
has  a  soul  as  well  as  a  body.  Its  body 
is  our  great  rock-ribbed  mother-earth 
with  her  endless  expanse  of  fields  and 
1 1551 


hills,  of  rivers  and  surging  seas.  Its 
soul  is  the  spirit  of  light — of  sunlight, 
of  moonlight,  of  starlight — which  plays 
ceaselessly  across  the  face  of  the  land- 
scape, veiling  it  at  night  in  mystery 
and  shadow,  painting  it  at  dawn  with 
the  colors  of  the  pearl-shell,  and  bath- 
ing it  at  mid-day  in  a  luminous  glory. 
To  this  and  to  the  ambient  and  all- 
enveloping  atmosphere,  with  its  clouds 
and  its  mists,  its  rain  and  its  veiling 
haze,  are  due  the  infinite  and  ever- 
shifting  moods  of  nature.  He  who 
paints  the  body  alone  may  be  an  excel- 
lent craftsman,  but  the  true  artist  is 
he  who  paints  the  beautiful  body  in- 
formed and  irradiated  by  the  still  more 
lovely  and  fascinating  spirit — he  who 
renders  the  mood. 

The  painter  who  lacks  this  greatest  of 
all  gifts,  or  who,  having  it,  failsr  to 
use  it,  might  just  as  well  scrape  his 

[156] 


ON  VISION 


palette  and  close  his  color-box,  for  his 
message  to  humanity  will  not  be  worth 
the  telling. 


XV 

THE   IMPORTANCE    OF   FEAR- 
LESSNESS IN  PAINTING 

BE  courageous.  Always  dare  to  the 
limit  of  your  knowledge  and  just  a  little 
beyond.  You  must  show  conviction 
yourself,  if  you  would  convince  others. 
One  of  our  best  painters  recently  assured 
me  that  cheek  was  his  only  technical 
asset.  This  was  not  true,  but  it  was  half 
true. 

The  public  loves  to  be  dictated  to  in 
matters  of  art — to  feel  that  the  painter 
is  "onto  his  job."  It  will  pass  by  the 
man  who  says  "I  think,"  and  stand 
rapt  every  time  before  the  picture  of 
the  man  who  says  "I  know."  Aim  to 
tell  the  truth ;  but  if  you  have  to  lie,  lie 
courageously.  A  courageous  lie  has 
r  158] 


FEARLESSNESS  IN  PAINTING 

often  more  virtue  than  a  timid  truth. 
My  brother,  the  marine  painter,  was 
once  asked  by  a  mutual  friend  to  criti- 
cise two  marines  upon  which  the  lat- 
ter was  at  work.  He  went  without 
enthusiasm,  for  the  man  had  never  at- 
tempted a  sea-piece  in  his  life — and  it 
takes  years  to  understand  the  ocean. 
On  his  return,  I  asked  about  it.  "Why  it 
was  simply  astounding,"  was  the  reply. 
"They  were  false  of  course.  But  they 
were  so  cheeky  that  they  would  convince 
any  one  but  a  marine  painter."  When 
you  know  that  this  man  was  color-blind, 
and  that  he  had  compassed  success  in 
spite  of  his  handicap,  you  will  under- 
stand the  kind  of  courage  he  dealt  in. 
Use  plenty  of  pigment  also — great 
"gobs"  of  it.  A  well-furnished  palette 
is  half  the  battle.  Squeeze  out  twice  as 
much  color  as  you  think  you  can  pos- 
sibly need,  and  then  use  it  all.  Look 

[159] 


•LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

at  the  work  of  our  friends  Redfield, 
Sorolla,  Foster,  Schofield,  Dougherty, 
Dearth,  Chase — all  the  good  painters. 
It  shows  clearly  that  they  have  plenty  of 
paint  upon  their  palettes.  Never  count 
the  cost  of  your  pigments.  Use  them  as 
if  they  were  the  very  dirt  under  your  feet. 
There  are  difficulties  enough  in  art 
without  adding  another  to  the  list.  At 
best  (or  worst)  you  can  hardly  use  more 
than  twenty  dollars'  worth  of  pigment 
on  any  one  canvas,  and  that  is  a  baga- 
telle in  comparison  to  the  thousands 
which  you  propose  to  ask  for  your  pict- 
ure. Paint  with  house  paints  if  you 
are  too  poor  to  have  a  generous  supply 
of  the  tube  variety,  but  for  Heaven's 
sake,  don't  stint  your  palette. 

When  I  was  working  in  France,  some 
twenty  years  ago,  one  of  the  younger 
painters  asked  me  for  a  criticism  on  his 
"Salon."  I  found  him  at  work  upon 

[160] 


FEARLESSNESS  IN  PAINTING 

quite  a  large  canvas,  using  a  palette 
which  was  dotted  with  mere  pin-points 
of  color.  The  picture  was  well  arranged 
and  well  "seen,"  but  with  that  palette 
of  course  good  painting  was  impossible. 
Carroll  was  a  poor  man.  We  were  all 
aware  that  his  allowance  was  barely 
sufficient  to  pay  for  the  simplest  of  food 
and  lodging;  and  the  cost  of  artist's  ma- 
terials must  have  been  a  serious  drain 
upon  his  slender  resources.  So  I  hesi- 
tated long  before  asking  for  his  color- 
box.  There  was  but  one  thing  to  do, 
however;  so,  resolutely  smothering  all 
compunctions,  I  seized  upon  the  pre- 
cious tube  of  madder  and  squeezed  out 
a  most  generous  supply.  Carroll  jumped 
nearly  out  of  his  boots. 

"  Good  gracious!"  he  exclaimed,  "why 
that  amount  would  last  me  two  weeks  at 
least." 

My  only  reply  was  to  follow  suit  with  the 

[161] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

cobalt,  the  cadmium,  and  the  ultra-ma- 
rine. In  less  than  two  minutes  I  had  a  pal- 
ette as  generously  furnished  as  the  most 
extravagant  impressionist  could  desire. 

"There,  Carroll,"  I  said,  "that  is  the 
best  criticism  I  can  possibly  give  you. 
Use  all  those  pigments  this  morning,  and 
the  result  will  be  such  a  piece  of  painting 
as  you  have  never  done  in  your  life." 

It  was  a  seemingly  heartless  piece  of 
surgery.  But  I  felt  that,  like  many  an- 
other surgical  operation,  it  was  necessary 
to  save  life.  Carroll  was  first  of  all  a 
painter.  He  could  dispense  with  food 
for  a  while,  but  he  could  not  dispense 
with  the  materials  of  his  craft.  Well! 
the  paint  was  out  of  the  tubes,  and 
it  must  either  be  utilized  or  wasted.  So 
Carroll  used  it,  with  the  result  that  his 
picture  was  not  only  well  hung,  but 
was  sold  for  enough  to  repay  the  cost 
of  the  colors  fifty-fold.  Not  long  since 

[162] 


FEARLESSNESS  IN  PAINTING 

I  met  him  again,  and  he  assured  me 
that  his  whole  success  as  a  painter 
dated  from  that  lesson. 

But  there 'is  another  form  of  courage 
which  is  more  important  than  either  of 
those  referred  to — and  that  is  moral 
courage — the  ability  to  stand  squarely 
upon  your  own  feet  and  say,  "Thus  do 
I  see  the  thing,  and  thus  will  I  paint  it." 
Look  at  Win  slow  Homer  and  at  Whis- 
tler. Do  you  imagine  for  an  instant  that 
either  of  these  masters  ever  concerned 
himself  with  the  question  of  how  any 
one  else  saw  nature  ?  Their  pictures  say, 
hardily,  "This  is  the  way  that  I  see  it." 
Stick  to  your  own  vision  therefore,  if 
you  would  rise  above  the  throng.  Stand 
aloof!  and  force  the  note,  if  possible — 
your  own  personal  note.  But  first  of  all, 
be  sure  that  you  have  something  to  say ; 
for  an  empty  boast  awakes  only  a  smile, 
and  a  bluff  is  soon  called. 

[163] 


XVI 

THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

HAS  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  inquire 
who  it  is  that  mechanically  writes  your 
letters  for  you  while  you  do  the  think- 
ing; who  plays  the  notes  of  the  piano 
or  the  violin  while  the  musician  is  intent 
upon  the  interpretation ;  who  frequently 
goes  on  reading  the  printed  page  when 
your  thoughts  have  wandered  far  away  ? 
It  is  the  sub-conscious  servant,  the 
eager  helper,  who  performs  for  us  daily 
a  thousand  little  unrecognized  services, 
saves  our  lives  often  by  the  rapid- 
ity of  his  action,  and  watches  over  us 
with  constant  care  lest,  by  our  own 
thoughtlessness,  we  come  to  any  harm — 

[164] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

the  willing  assistant,  without  whose 
tireless  aid  we  could  none  of  us  sup- 
port the  strain  of  a  single  day's  exist- 
ence. 

The  human  brain  is  divided  into  two 
entirely  separate  compartments,  which 
might  be  compared  to  the  two  stories 
of  a  mansion,  in  the  upper  of  which 
resides  the  lord  and  master  who  does 
all  of  the  planning  and  ordering,  while 
the  ground  floor  is  inhabited  by  the 
well-trained  servant,  who  not  only 
carries  out  the  orders  that  are  tele- 
phoned down  from  above,  but,  without 
any  direct  commands,  attends  to  all  the 
mechanical  details  of  the  household, 
protects  the  master  from  outside  inva- 
sion, and  watches  over  his  physical 
needs — the  conscious  ego  and  the  sub- 
conscious servant.  But  if  the  servant  is 
to  be  a  thoroughly  capable  and  intelli- 
gent assistant,  he  must  be  well  and 

[165] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

carefully  trained;  and  this  fact  is  so 
well  recognized  that  the  years  of  our 
adolescence  are  mainly  devoted  to  this 
object. 

In  order  to  appreciate  how  well  the 
work  is  carried  out  and  how  attentively 
the  pupil  has  listened  to  his  master, 
you  have  only  to  call  upon  him  for,  say, 
the  letters  of  the  alphabet  or  the  multi- 
plication table.  He  will  reel  them  off 
for  you  at  a  rate  to  make  the  head  spin. 
He  has  charge  of  all  the  stored-up  in- 
formation of  life ;  he  is  the  guardian  of 
the  treasures  of  memory,  and  he  keeps 
his  treasures  all  pigeon-holed  and  tabu- 
lated, and  ready  for  the  instant  service 
of  the  master — but  upon  one  condition 
— that  his  services  be  so  frequently  called 
upon  that  his  powrers  do  not  become  atro- 
phied through  lack  of  use.  It  is  not  in  the 
simple  capacity  of  a  bookkeeper,  how- 
ever, that  he  serves  us  best.  Having  per- 

[166] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

sonal  charge  of  all  our  stores  of  knowledge 
and  experience,  he  is  able  to  correlate 
quickly,  and  can  often  hand  us  in  a 
flash  the  solution  of  a  problem  which 
the  reasoning  ego  might  have  taken 
hours  to  reach,  or  might  never  have 
been  able  to  reach  at  all.  There  are 
numerous  records  of  cases  where 
mathematicians  or  other  searchers  after 
truth,  having  labored  long  and  fruit- 
lessly to  solve  a  certain  problem,  have 
waked  up  some  morning  with  the  solu- 
tion clear  before  them.  The  little  sub- 
conscious servant  had  taken  the  thing 
up  during  the  night  and  handed  them 
the  answer  in  the  morning.  The  sub- 
conscious never  sleeps.  It  is  only  the 
reasoning  part  of  our  brains  that  needs 
the  recuperation  of  slumber.* 
Genius  is  the  term  by  which  we  desig- 

*  See  the  very  remarkable  book  on  "Sleep,"  by  Hon. 
John  Bigelow. 

[167] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

nate  the  man  or  woman  who  is  gifted 
with  a  sub-conscious  nature  of  unusual 
power  or  activity;  for  the  so-called 
flashes  of  genius  represent  the  beautiful 
and  perfect  correlations  and  harmonies 
that  can  only  be  compassed  at  the 
source  of  things,  and  without  the  bun- 
gling interference  of  reasoning  man.  In- 
stinct, intuition,  and  inspiration  are 
other  words  which  we  use  to  describe 
this  phenomenon,  but  they  all  mean  the 
same  thing. 

There  is  no  man,  probably,  who  has 
more  need  of  the  help  of  this  faithful 
sub-conscious  servant  than  the  artist, 
for  so  many  of  the  mental  processes  of 
art  must  be  instinctive.  Moreover,  in 
the  purely  mechanical  sense,  painters, 
and  especially  landscape  painters,  are 
peculiarly  dependent  upon  a  well- 
trained  memory.  When  I  was  a  student 
in  Paris  a  certain  celebrated  painter 

[168] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

was  helpful  to  me  in  many  ways  and 
gave  me  much  good  advice.  I  was  in  his 
studio  one  day,  a  month  or  so  after  his 
return  from  a  trip  in  Holland.  He 
placed  upon  the  easel  one  after  another 
eight  finished  pictures  and  showed  me 
a  dozen  canvases  rubbed  in  with  the 
warm  gray  which  he  preferred  for  an 
undertone.  "Those  also  are  finished," 
he  said;  "all  that  remains  is  to  put  on 
the  color."  Each  picture  represented  a 
different  time  of  day,  the  effects  vary- 
ing from  high  noon  to  midnight.  The 
motives  had  been  stored  carefully  in 
the  memory  and  the  pictures  all  painted 
after  the  master's  return  to  Paris. 

It  was  a  marvellous  feat  to  have 
carried  all  these  varying  effects  simul- 
taneously in  the  mind  without  con- 
fusion, and  I  did  not  dissimulate  my 
astonishment. 

"Well,  mon  ami,"   he   said,  "I  dis- 

[169] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

covered  when  I  was  quite  a  youngster 
that  all  of  the  really  beautiful  effects, 
the  things  which  I  particularly  wished 
to  paint,  would  not  wait  my  pleasure. 
They  were  often  evanescent  moods  that 
lasted  but  ten  minutes  at  most, — or  they 
were  night  scenes.  So  I  began  to  make 
studies  from  memory — one  little  study 
every  day.  After  five  years  of  this  train- 
ing I  found  that  I  could  reproduce  fairly 
well  any  scene  which  I  had  been  able  to 
study  for  ten  minutes;  and  now  after 
twenty-five  years  of  practice  my  mem- 
ory has  become  automatic;  so  that  if  I 
fail  with  any  of  my  canvases  it  is  not 
because  my  memory  fails  me  but  be- 
cause of  technical  difficulties  or  poor 
judgment  in  the  selection  of  the  mo- 
tive. On  several  occasions  I  have 
painted  effects  seen  from  the  window 
of  a  flying  train.  I  should  advise  you  to 
begin  the  same  kind  of  study." 

[170] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

I  took  his  advice,  and  after  twenty- 
five  years  of  the  same  kind  of  practice 
I  can  at  least  corroborate  his  statement 
in  regard  to  the  automatic  working  of 
the  thoroughly  trained  memory. 

But  even  where  the  effect  is  more  last- 
ing, and  where  a  painter  might  have 
two  or  three  hours  to  work  direct  from 
nature,  I  believe  that  the  final  picture 
must  always  be  painted  from  memory ; 
and  I  seriously  question  if  any  really 
great  landscape  was  ever  wholly  painted 
in  the  open.  A  picture  painted  direct 
from  nature  must  necessarily  be  hasty, 
ill-considered,  somewhat  raw,  and  lack- 
ing in  the  synthetic  and  personal  qual- 
ity which  is  the  distinguishing  mark  of 
all  great  art — unless  indeed  the  work 
is  really  done  from  memory  while  the 
painter  is  standing  before  nature — 
which  might  be  the  case  if  he  had  had 
time  and  opportunity  to  ripen  his  vision. 

[171] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Of  course  one  must  paint  what  one 
sees,  but  one  must  see  through  the  mind 
as  well  as  through  the  eye.  I  do  not 
mean  by  this  to  assert  that  young 
painters  can  entirely  dispense  with 
study  direct  from  nature,  or  even  that 
the  veteran  would  not  do  well  occa- 
sionally to  carry  his  easel  into  the  open 
air.  The  student  indeed  must  paint  for 
many  years  direct  from  his  subject, 
must  pry  as  closely  as  ever  he  can  into 
the  secrets  of  nature;  but  I  would  have 
him  at  the  same  time  constantly  train 
the  sub-conscious  servant,  so  that  when 
the  time  comes  that  his  services  shall 
be  needed,  he  will  be  indeed  a  "good 
and  faithful  servant." 

The  wonderful  synthetic  charm  of 
Japanese  art  is  largely  due  to  the  uni- 
versal custom  of  the  Japanese  artists  of 
working  wholly  from  memory.  Any  one 
who  studies  their  drawings  of  birds,  of 

[172] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

fishes,  of  animals,  and  of  flowers  would 
find  it  hard  to  maintain  (as  I  have 
heard  it  maintained  in  regard  to  mem- 
ory painting)  that  they  thereby  lose  the 
character  of  the  subject.  It  is  only  when 
the  memory  is  deficient  or  insufficient 
that  this  danger  arises.  A  pretty  story 
illustrative  of  this  is  told  of  an  Amer- 
ican traveller  who,  while  in  Tokio,  had 
purchased  an  embroidered  picture  of  a 
waterfall  which  he  desired  to  have 
appropriately  framed  before  leaving 
Japan.  He  was  directed  to  the  work- 
shop of  an  expert  wood-carver,  who 
accepted  the  commission ;  and  after 
consultation  a  design  was  selected 
whose  principal  decorative  motive  was 
the  tortoise.  Returning  in  a  couple  of 
days,  the  patron  found  the  artist  at 
work  upon  the  nearly  completed  frame, 
which  was  indeed  a  beautiful  and  most 
artistic  creation.  While  they  talked, 

[173] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

something  stirred  among  the  shavings 
at  the  back  of  the  bench.  It  was  a  live 
turtle  which  had  served  the  carver  for 
a  model.  The  poor  man  was  all  blush- 
ing confusion. 

"The  honorable  gentleman  will  par- 
don me,'*  he  said.  "I  am  a  simple  artisan. 
Had  I  been  an  artist  I  should  not  have 
needed  the  turtle  here  to  copy  from." 

One  of  my  own  most  interesting  and 
illuminating  experiences  was  an  inter- 
view which  I  once  had  with  an  eminent 
Japanese  artist.  At  the  time  of  my  visit 
he  was  at  work  upon  a  large  screen 
of  which  the  principal  motive  was  a 
crouching  leopard  ready  to  spring.  I 
watched  him  as  with  three  or  four  long 
supple  sweeps  of  the  brush  he  placed  the 
beast  upon  the  silken  background,  a 
marvel  of  sinuous  and  savage  force. 

"It  is  a  wonder!"  I  exclaimed.  "How 
do  you  do  it?" 

[174] 


Bruce  Crane — "November  Hills" 

By  permission  of  Carnegie  Institute,  Pittsburg 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

Oki  smiled. 

"In  Nippon,"  he  said,  "we  do  not 
study  art  in  the  American  way.  We 
don't  sit  down  before  a  thing  and  copy 
it.  The  master  takes  his  pupils  to  the 
cage  of  the  tiger,  and  he  say :  *  Look  at 
the  tiger's  leg  and  the  shape  of  his  paws; 
look  at  his  eyes  and  the  way  his  ears 
lie  back  upon  the  head;  look  at  his 
long  body  and  his  sweeping  tail;  see 
how  he  crouches  as  he  walks.'  Then  we 
go  home  and  each  one  makes  a  draw- 
ing, and  the  master  say  all  those  draw- 
ings very  bad.  And  the  next  day  we  go 
again  to  the  cage  of  the  tiger  and  look 
at  the  things  we  do  not  remember;  and 
we  go  again  the  next  day,  and  maybe  we 
go  every  day  for  one  month,  two  month, 
three  month — but  in  the  end  we  know 
that  tiger."  And  he  certainly  did  know 
his  tiger.  v 

To  the  figure  painter,  of  course,  and 

[175] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

especially  to  the  painter  of  in-door  sub- 
jects, who  can  control  his  effect  and 
can  place  his  model  day  after  day  in  the 
same  light,  the  advantage  of  memory 
painting  may  not  be  so  apparent;  yet 
even  here  I  maintain  that  its  more  fre- 
quent use  would  be  of  greater  advan- 
tage than  is  appreciated  at  the  first 
blush;  and  this  because  the  psychology 
of  art  is  universal  in  its  application,  and 
true  synthetic  beauty  is  not  within  the 
reach  of  the  mere  copyist — be  he  ever 
so  brilliant  a  workman. 

It  is  said  that  Rembrandt  often  worked 
upon  his  pictures  from  memory,  and 
report  has  it  that  Velasquez  preferred 
to  paint  with  his  sitter  in  the  next  room. 
In  regard  to  the  greatest  of  all  modern 
figure  painters,  and  one  of  the  greatest 
of  all  times,  Jean  Fran9ois  Millet,  we 
have  living  witnesses  to  the  fact  that  he 
never  worked  from  nature. 

[176] 


THE  SUB-CONSCIOUS  SERVANT 

Now  if  this  is  held  to  be  bad  and  dan- 
gerous counsel  to  give  to  students,  I 
would  simply  remark  that  a  student  is  a 
potential  master,  that  he  has  the  right 
to  all  the  knowledge  there  is  in  the 
world,  and  that  he  must  be  presumed 
to  have  sufficient  discretion  to  apply  it 
wisely  to  his  own  needs.  Coddling  never 
developed  a  strong  man. 


1177) 


XVII 
TEMPERAMENT 

A  TALENTED  young  painter,  who  was 
just  beginning  to  make  his  mark,  drifted 
into  my  studio  one  day  and  threw  him- 
self into  a  chair  in  gloomy  silence.  He 
smoked  morosely  for  five  minutes,  while 
I  went  on  with  my  painting.  Finally  he 
broke  the  silence.  "Have  I  told  you,"  he 
said,  "that  I  mean  to  give  up  art,  to 
quit  the  whole  bally  business  ?  Well !  it 
is  a  fact.  I  have  had  the  offer  of  an  ex- 
cellent berth  in  my  father's  office,  and  I 
am  going  to  accept  it." 

"Why!  why!"  I  cried,  "what  is  all 
this  coil?" 

"That  is  precisely  what  I  am  unable 
to  explain,"  he  replied.  "I  have  simply 

[178J 


TEMPERAMENT 

lost  my  grip.  I  have  forgotten  how  to 
paint,  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it.  I  am 
in  first-class  shape  physically  and  my 
brain-box  doesn't  show  any  unusual 
cracks ;  but  for  the  past  two  months  my 
work  has  been  going  from  bad  to  worse. 
Every  canvas  is  just  a  little  more  like 
punk  than  the  preceding  one.  At  first  I 
gritted  my  teeth  and  worked  all  the 
harder;  but  the  harder  I  worked  the 
worse  my  things  became.  It's  no  use.  I 
throw  up  the  sponge." 
I  dropped  my  palette  and  grasped  him 
by  the  hand  with  an  enthusiasm  which 
must  have  appeared  to  him  somewhat 
misplaced.  "My  dear  fellow,"  I  cried, 
"I  congratulate  you.  If  your  pictures 
had  not  already  shown  you  the  consum- 
mate painter,  you  have  just  given  the 
most  incontrovertible  proof  of  the  fact. 
You  are  simply  soaked  in  temperament. 
Get  down  on  your  knees,  my  boy ,  and 

[179] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

thank  your  lucky  stars  for  that.  If  the 
pendulum  has  swung  unconscionably 
low  at  present,  you  may  rest  assured  that 
it  will  swing  all  the  higher  on  the  return 
stroke.  The  only  man  who  never  doubts 
himself,  who  plugs  stolidly  on  to  his 
goal,  deviating  neither  to  right  nor  to 
left,  is  the  man  who  is  born  wholly  with- 
out temperament.  If  he  never  falls  to 
any  depths  of  despair,  neither  does  he 
rise  to  any  heights  of  glory;  and  if  he 
is  never  supremely  miserable,  on  the 
other  hand  he  is  never  supremely  happy. 
He  is  simply  the  good,  honest  bromide; 
the  very  salt  of  the  earth,  if  you  will, 
and  its  balance-wheel ;  but  never  by  any 
conceivable  possibility  could  he  be  an 
artist.  Your  present  depression  is  simply 
the  price  that  you  pay  for  the  immense 
joy  which  is  yours  during  the  full  tide  of 
creative  production.  So  take  your  medi- 
cine like  a  man.  Also  take  a  drink  if  you 

[180] 


TEMPERAMENT 

need  it,  but  let  us  hear  no  more  of  this 
drivel  about  giving  up  art." 

As  artists  grow  older,  and  after  a  dozen 
repetitions  of  the  same  experience,  they 
come  to  regard  this  recurrent  waxing 
and  waning  of  the  divine  flame  as  a 
normal  condition  of  their  being;  and 
presently  they  recognize  the  fits  of  de- 
pression as  periods  of  incubation,  out  of 
which  they  are  apt  to  emerge  with  added 
strength,  with  some  new  light  on  diffi- 
cult problems  that  have  long  harassed 
them.  They  also  discover  that  these  off 
times  can  be  very  profitably  employed 
in  many  ways — in  absorbing  the  great 
literature  of  the  world  for  instance,  a 
pleasure  for  which  they  have  scant 
leisure  at  other  times;  in  studying  the 
great  masters  of  painting  and  delving 
after  the  secret  of  their  greatness;  and 
last,  but  not  least,  in  simple  physical 
relaxation  and  recuperation — tramps 

[181] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

across  the  hills  or  bouts  on  the  golf-links 
—the  eye  always  open  and  the  mind 
passively  but  delightfully  receptive. 

One  of  our  very  greatest  painters,  who 
is  now  gone,  never  learned  this  impor- 
tant lesson.  When  the  flame  burned  low, 
and  work  lagged,  he  drank  coffee  to 
stimulate  his  tired  nerves.  When  even 
this  failed  to  rouse  the  exhausted  ener- 
gies he  had  recourse  to  alcohol,  and 
when  finally  the  great  work  was  com- 
pleted the  painter  was  often  launched 
upon  a  spree  of  a  fortnight's  duration.  It 
thus  happens  that  a  man  who  tempera- 
mentally disliked  alcohol,  who  was  nor- 
mally one  of  the  gentlest  and  soberest  of 
men,  has  gone  down  in  history  as  a 
roysterer  and  a  dipsomaniac.  He  burned 
himself  out  before  his  time ;  but  in  thus 
recklessly  using  up  his  vital  energies,  he 
produced  a  series  of  wonderful  pictures 
that  will  remain  for  all  time  one  of  the 

[182] 


TEMPERAMENT 

chief  glories  of  our  day.  In  the  final 
summing  up,  when  reputations  are  re- 
sorted and  re-classed,  he  will  be  given 
his  true  place;  and  it  will  be  the  place 
of  a  great  if  a  mistaken  hero. 

But  most  of  us  have  now  grown  wiser. 
In  either  literature  or  art  it  is  no  longer 
considered  necessary  unduly  to  burn  the 
midnight  oil  or  to  wear  the  hair  long. 
And  when  the  inevitable  fits  of  temper- 
amental depression  are  upon  us  we  have 
learned  that  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to 
keep  a  level  head,  to  see  things  in  their 
true  proportions,  and  to  trust  in  the 
Lord — to  be  a  philosopher,  in  a  word. 
I  do  not  mean  a  philosopher  of  the  cold 
and  aristocratic  Nietzsche  type,  nor  a 
pessimist  like  Schopenhauer,  but  a  gen- 
ial, sane,  and  wrhole-souled  optimist  like 
Socrates.  All  true  philosophers  are  lev- 
ellers— levellers  up  as  well  as  down.  A 
condition  of  affairs  which  might  loom 

[183] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

portentous  and  threatening  to  the  man 
in  the  street,  such  an  one  would  receive 
with  a  smile  of  gentle  humor,  for  he 
would  see  through  the  disguise  and 
know  it  as  a  harmless  humbug;  while 
something  else  which  to  the  ordinary 
mortal  might  appear  a  mere  triviality 
he  would  lift  gravely  into  a  place  of 
high  honor,  divining  its  fundamental 
seriousness  and  importance. 

These  regularly  recurring  fits  of  de- 
pression seem  to  depend  in  no  wise  upon 
the  state  of  the  bodily  health.  In  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  and  Theodore  Robin- 
son we  have  examples  of  wonderful 
temperamental  resilience  coupled  with 
wretched  physical  condition. 

In  fact,  as  a  noted  painter  once  said  to 
me,  "These  semi-invalids  neither  need 
nor  deserve  our  commiseration,  for  in 
reality  the  beggars  have  the  advantage 
of  us.  Their  nerves  are  always  sensitive 

[184] 


TEMPERAMENT 

and  keyed  to  pitch,  while  we  husky 
chaps  have  to  flog  ours  up  to  the  point. 
We  must  dig  painfully  through  the 
outer  layers  of  flesh  and  muscle  before 
we  can  get  at  the  spirit,  while  the  in- 
valids are  all  spirit.  Personally,  I  know 
that  my  best  work  is  always  done  the 
morning  after  a  spree,  when  I  come  to 
the  studio  a  bit  shaky  and  with  the 
nerves  all  on  edge." 
Although  this  highly  immoral  state- 
ment was  evidently  made  largely  with 
a  view  to  picturesque  effect,  it  did, 
nevertheless,  enunciate  a  truth  that  has 
generally  escaped  attention ;  for  it  is 
quite  true  that  (given  sufficient  strength 
to  drag  the  body  about)  physical  weak- 
ness is  not  an  insuperable  bar  to  success 
in  art.  Very  frail  men  and  very  frail 
women  have  achieved  distinction  in 
various  artistic  callings.  This,  however, 
applies  more  particularly  to  the  seden- 

[185] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

tary  arts,  such  as  writing,  musical  com- 
position, and  certain  lines  of  craftswork : 
for  the  painter,  and  especially  the  land- 
scape painter,  must  sometimes  cover 
miles  with  his  legs  in  the  course  of  his 
day's  work.  We  all  know  also  that  a 
robust  physique  is  essential  to  success 
on  the  operatic  stage. 

Nor  do  the  spells  of  depression  of 
which  we  are  speaking  appear  to  derive 
in  any  way  from  the  dominating  and 
conscious  portion  of  our  brains — the 
part  which  under  great  physical  or  emo- 
tional strain  sometimes  loses  its  balance; 
for  there  are  cases  of  artists  who  have 
become  insane  and  have  still  remained 
great  artists.  A  noted  example  of  this 
kind  was  the  Spaniard  Goya.  The  char- 
acter of  his  subjects  was  affected  by  his 
loss  of  mental  control,  naturally.  They 
became  ghastly  and  often  incoherent. 
This  was  what  might  have  been  ex- 

[186] 


Ben  Foster — "Early  Moonrise' 


TEMPERAMENT 

pected.  But  the  fundamental  tempera- 
mental quality  of  his  art  remained  great 
to  the  end.  The  temperamental  man, 
dwelling  deep  down  below  the  surface, 
had  not  been  affected  by  the  storm 
which  had  played  havoc  with  the  sur- 
face nature. 

We  are  therefore  forced  irresistibly  to 
the  conclusion  that  temperament  re- 
sides in  the  emotional,  in  other  words, 
in  the  sub-conscious  nature  of  man. 
When  the  temperamental  energy  gives 
out,  and  the  artist  loses  his  grip,  the 
strong  probability  is  that  he  has,  with- 
out knowing  it,  overworked  the  sub- 
conscious servant;  and  if  this  ever- 
faithful  helper  fails  to  respond  to  the 
demands  made  upon  him,  it  is  through 
no  unwillingness  to  serve  the  master,  but 
because  of  utter  exhaustion  and  inability 
to  react. 

If  therefore  we  regard  these  periods 

[187] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

of  temperamental  depression  as  incom- 
prehensible, it  is  because  we  have  come 
to  look  upon  the  conscious,  reasoning 
part  of  our  intelligence  as  the  sole  source 
of  mental  energy,  whereas  it  is  only  one 
factor  in  the  complicated  organism 
which  we  know  as  the  human  ego.  If 
we  cared  to  push  still  further  our  re- 
searches along  this  same  line,  we  might 
claim  that  above  and  beyond  both  the 
conscious  and  the  sub-conscious  natures 
of  man  lives  the  animating  and  con- 
trolling essence  from  which  both  must 
draw  their  power,  and  which,  for  lack 
of  a  better  nomenclature,  we  call  the 
human  soul.  But  this  is  the  job  of  the 
psychologist,  not  of  the  artist. 


(188| 


XVIII 
CHARACTER 

IF  you  should  ask  a  dozen  painters 
what  mental  qualification  was  most 
essential  to  an  artist's  success,  the 
chances  are  that  every  man  of  them 
would  reply  "temperament" — in  other 
words,  genius  and  imagination.  Trans- 
posed, these  terms  all  mean  the  same 
thing — a  peculiarly  sensitive  sub-con- 
scious organization — one  that  is  at  once 
keenly  alive  to  beauty,  and  capable  of 
that  rapid  and  intuitive  coordination  of 
impressions  whose  visible  and  tangible 
result  is  the  work  of  genius.  And  in 
a  way  the  painters  would  be  right;  for 
without  temperament  no  man  can  be 
an  artist;  but  temperament  alone  will 

[189] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

not  suffice.  If  I  were  myself  asked  to 
supply  a  formula  for  the  making  of  an 
artist,  my  receipt  would  be,  one  part 
genius  and  nine  parts  hard  work.  I 
sometimes  glance  back  to  my  student 
days  and  wonder  what  has  become  of 
all  the  clever  and  brilliant  chaps  over 
whose  easels  the  rest  of  us  were  used  to 
hang  in  awe  and  admiration.  One  by 
one  they  have  all  dropped  out.  Things 
came  too  easy  to  them.  They  were  not 
obliged  to  "plug"  and  "grind,"  and  so 
they  never  learned  their  trade.  Their 
places  have  been  taken  by  others — the 
plodders  who  stuck  to  their  studies 
throughout  the  whole  week  with  grim 
determination,  dropping  their  brushes 
only  at  the  stroke  of  twelve  on  Saturday. 
One  ugly  duckling  in  particular  I  re- 
member well.  His  work  was  so  hope- 
less that  the  whole  Latin  Quarter  was 
sincerely  sorry  for  him.  Finally  his 

[190] 


CHARACTER 

master  in  despair  urged  him  to  give 
up  art  and  go  into  the  grocery  line. 
That  man  is  at  present  one  of  the 
most  famous  artists  of  the  day — a 
truly  great  painter.  Down  deep  in  his 
nature,  of  course,  he  had  temperament. 
He  could  not  have  achieved  his  distin- 
guished place  in  art  without  it.  But  he 
also  had  character;  character,  which 
means  the  ability  to  work  when  it 
would  be  easier  to  play;  the  ability  to 
say  "No,"  when  it  would  be  far  easier 
to  say  "Yes";  the  ability  to  stand  out 
in  the  sun  and  sweat  over  a  study  when 
it  would  be  so  much  pleasanter  to  lie 
in  the  shade  and  read  a  book;  the  abil- 
ity to  live  on  a  dollar  a  week  and  be  con- 
tent; the  ability  to  surrender  all  of  the 
little  present  pleasures  of  life,  in  order 
one  day  to  achieve  that  greater  pleasure 
which  comes  with  success  in  one's 
chosen  profession. 

[191] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

I  met  recently  a  schoolboy  companion 
who  as  a  man  has  won  an  enviable  posi- 
tion in  life.  He  told  me  that  at  one  time 
he  was  a  cub  engineer  in  the  employ  of 
Andrew  Carnegie.  An  important  part  of 
one  of  the  important  machines  having 
broken,  he  was  detailed  to  secure  a 
duplicate  fitting,  with  stringent  orders 
to  return  with  the  missing  part  before 
nightfall.  He  hustled  off  with  the  deter- 
mination to  make  a  record,  and  scoured 
both  Pittsburg  and  Allegheny  City 
without  result.  He  then  telephoned  to 
Cincinnati,  Cleveland  and  Louisville 
with  no  better  success.  Finally  he  called 
up  New  York;  and  there  at  last  got  on 
the  track  of  the  much  wanted  cam.  He 
could  have  caught  a  late  afternoon 
train  and  been  back  in  the  morning, 
but,  all  things  considered,  he  thought 
it  would  be  best  to  report  at  head- 
quarters, and  then  take  the  midnight 
[192] 


CHARACTER 

express  if  ordered  to  do  so.  He  was 
pretty  proud  of  himself  on  the  whole, 
and  did  not  mind  having  missed  his 
dinner.  Seeking  out  Mr.  Carnegie  he 
started  in  to  tell  him  all  that  he  had 
done  in  his  strenuous  day.  The  iron- 
master interrupted  him  brusquely. 

"Young  man,"  he  said,  "I  care  no- 
thing for  explanations.  I  demand  re- 
sults. I  will  give  you  another  twenty- 
four  hours.  If  by  that  time  you  have 
not  procured  the  cam,  you  leave  the 
works." 

My  friend  left  the  iron  master's  pres- 
ence somewhat  crestfallen;  but  he  then 
and  there  made  up  his  mind  to  demand 
as  much  of  himself  in  future  as  was 
now  demanded  of  him.  He  never  failed 
again  in  a  serious  undertaking;  and  he 
rose  to  be  one  of  the  chief  steel  experts 
of  the  country,  with  an  income  any- 
where from  $50,000  to  $100,000  a  year. 

[193] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Now  if  that  kind  of  character  and  de- 
termination are  necessary  to  success  in 
business  life,  they  are  infinitely  more 
necessary  to  an  artist.  He  has  no  task- 
master to  hold  him  to  his  job.  He  is  the 
slave  of  no  factory  bell  or  whistle.  No 
desk  or  office  calls  him  daily  at  9  A.  M. 
He  is  as  free  as  the  air  to  come  and  go 
as  he  likes,  and  when  he  likes.  He  can 
work  as  little  or  as  much  as  he  pleases. 
He  can  loaf  at  his  own  sweet  will.  And 
for  this  very  reason,  he  is  in  honor 
bound  to  work,  and  to  work  hard  and 
seriously.  It  is  a  case  of  noblesse  oblige. 

Moreover,  it  is  a  case  of  necessity.  If 
you  would  "arrive,"  you  must  work 
always  to  the  limit  of  your  force — and 
just  a  little  beyond.  It  is  not  all  cakes 
and  ale.  There  is  no  especial  fun  for 
instance  in  grinding  away  month  after 
month,  and  year  after  year,  at  drawing, 
which  is  not  your  forte;  in  cramming 

[194] 


CHARACTER 

up  on  values,  refraction  and  other 
technical  things  which  are  not  always 
remarkably  interesting,  but  which  you 
must  have  at  your  finger-ends  before 
you  can  "let  yourself  go."  And  even 
when  you  have  reached  that  happy 
stage,  the  necessity  for  hard  and  un- 
remitting labor  has  not  ceased.  Sargent 
will  tell  you  that  he  has  frequently 
scraped  out  a  single  head  twenty  times. 
For  the  optimistic  student  who  looks 
forward  to  the  happy  time  when  the 
necessity  for  hard  work  shall  be  ended 
there  is  inscribed  over  the  portals  of 
the  palace  of  art  this  special  motto: 
"All  hope  abandon  ye  who  enter  here." 
A  young  painter  once  stood  behind 
the  veteran  Jules  Breton,  while  he  was 
at  work  upon  one  of  his  important 
pictures — his  favorite  subject  of  little 
maids  in  their  white  communion  robes. 
It  was  delightful  to  observe  the  ease 

[195] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

and  dexterity  of  his  every  stroke.  The 
youth  spoke  enviously  of  the  joy  it 
must  be  to  have  attained  to  his  per- 
fect facility  of  technic  and  to  know 
every  time  a  picture  was  begun  that  it 
could  be  carried  through  easily  to  a  suc- 
cessful end. 

"My  dear  boy,"  was  the  reply,  "you 
will  never  reach  that  happy  land  here 
below.  I  sweat  blood  over  every  one  of 
my  pictures,  and  there  is  never  a  one 
that  is  not  at  some  time  a  failure.  Every 
new  picture  brings  a  new  problem,  and 
who  knows  if  we  may  be  able  to  solve 
it.  But  if  there  were  no  new  problems 
we  should  all  cease  painting;  for  there 
would  be  no  more  art." 

The  true  artist,  after  all,  is  greedy 
for  work.  He  needs  no  spur  to  goad 
him  to  his  best  endeavor.  The  danger 
lies  upon  the  other  side.  Cazin  used  to 
say,  "An  artist  has  no  time  to  care  for 

[196] 


CHARACTER 

his  health."  And  this  is  literally  true; 
for  the  conditions  of  artistic  creation 
often  demand  that  a  painter  or  a  sculp- 
tor shall  frequently  work  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  strength  during  a  long 
period — shall  draw  heavy  drafts  upon 
the  future ;  and  these  drafts  must  either 
be  paid  by  a  shortened  life,  or  made  up 
later  by  prolonged  periods  of  rest.  As 
it  is  not  possible  for  the  artist  to  work 
as  other  men  work,  a  given  number  of 
hours  each  day,  this  hardest  of  all 
workers  frequently  gains  the  reputation 
of  being  an  idler. 

I  cannot  think,  however,  that  erratic 
hours  are  either  necessary  or  excusable 
in  the  routine  of  student  life.  The  stu- 
dent's business  is  to  learn  all  he  can — 
to  train  the  sub-consciolis  servant  to  be 
the  valuable  helper  that  he  must  needs 
be  later  on ;  and  this  can  be  done  day  by 
day  with  as  much  adherence  to  regular 

[197] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

hours  as  the  business  man  demands  of 
his  assistants.  Moreover,  the  habit  thus 
acquired  will  tend  to  reduce  to  a  mini- 
mum the  irregularity  which  to  a  certain 
extent  is  inevitable  later  on.  Let  the 
student  who  feels  within  his  soul  the 
divine  fire  of  genius  beware  of  pitfalls. 
If  he  is  wise,  he  will  bottle  up  that  fire 
for  future  use,  and  in  the  meantime 
apply  himself  (like  the  diligent  appren- 
tice) to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge. 


[198] 


XIX 

WHAT  IS  A  GOOD  PICTURE  ? 

IN  reply  to  the  above  question  almost 
any  painter  would  reply  "mine  own"; 
and  if  the  particular  painter  to  whom 
the  question  is  put  chances  to  be  gifted 
with  sufficient  temperament,  backed  by 
a  sufficient  training,  his  claim  might 
very  well  be  justified.  But  there  is  an 
equal  chance  that  his  judgment  would 
be  at  fault  in  the  matter,  for  artists 
are  notoriously  the  poorest  judges  of 
their  own  work.  All  painters  willingly 
concede  the  correctness  of  this  state- 
ment as  applied  to  their  brother  ar- 
tists, but  there  are  few,  indeed,  who 
will  admit  its  justice  when  applied  to 
themselves.  If  this  were  otherwise  the 

[199] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

rule  which  has  for  years  made  the  ex- 
hibitions of  the  National  Academy  of 
Design  the  poorest  of  their  kind  in  the 
United  States — that  provision  which  ex- 
empts from  the  action  of  the  jury  certain 
pictures  entered  by  Academicians  and 
Associates — would  long  since  have  been 
abrogated ;  for,  just  as  no  man  willingly 
or  wittingly  writes  himself  down  an 
ass,  so  no  painter  would  wittingly  brand 
himself  a  duffer.  In  spite  of  this  pe- 
culiar personal  blindness  (which  seems 
to  be  incidental  to  the  artistic  tempera- 
ment) when  it  comes  to  the  work  of 
other  artists,  painters  are  the  best  judges 
of  painting.  Of  course  due  allowance 
must  be  made  for  personal  idiosyn- 
crasy and  variation  of  taste.  In  art,  as 
in  music  or  gastronomy,  taste  varies 
infinitely  according  to  individual  tem- 
perament, or  training.  But  just  as  a  wise 
gourmet,  to  whose  palate  terrapin  makes 

[200] 


WHAT  IS  A  GOOD  PICTURE? 

no  special  appeal,  would  not,  for  that 
only  reason,  deny  it  a  place  upon  the  bill 
of  fare,  so  no  sensible  painter  would 
deny  the  artistic  value  of  a  Japanese 
print  or  a  Persian  rug  simply  because 
he  does  not  happen  to  make  that  brand 
of  art.  Indeed,  if  there  is  any  one  rule 
for  the  judgment  of  works  of  art  whose 
application  is  universal,  it  is  that  which 
demands  of  a  picture,  a  print  or  a 
keramic  that  it  shall  differ  from  all 
other  work  in  the  same  line,  that  it  shall 
bear  the  impress  not  only  of  race  but  of 
individual  personality  within  the  racial 
limits.  For  it  is  the  personality  which 
makes  the  art.  Nature,  however  beau- 
tiful, is  not  art.  Art  is  natural  beauty 
interpreted  through  human  tempera- 
ment. 

Here,  then,  we  have  at  least  one  in- 
fallible test,  which  can  be  applied  to 
any    work    under    discussion — that    it 
[201] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

shall  be  clearly  and  strongly  stamped 
with  the  personality  of  its  maker,  so 
that  we  may  know  without  asking  that 
a  drawing  is  by  Hokusai,  or  a  painting 
by  Velasquez,  Whistler,  or  Winslow 
Homer.  And  originality  thus  expressed 
is  only  another  word  for  sincerity. 
Sincerity  used  in  this  sense,  however, 
is  far  from  meaning  a  slavish  or  me- 
chanical copy  of  nature.  The  highest 
form  of  sincerity  is  truth  to  the  artist's 
own  personal  vision  of  beauty. 
All  true  art  is  the  direct  result  of  anal- 
ysis and  synthesis  on  the  part  of  the 
artist — whether  instinctive,  or  accom- 
plished with  a  clear  conception  of  the 
work  to  be  done.  Having  analyzed  nat- 
ure's suggestive  motive,  the  artist  is  at 
liberty  in  the  synthetic  building  up  of 
his  work  to  use  as  many  or  as  few  of  the 
elements  as  his  personal  sense  of 
beauty  tells  him  will  be  necessary  to 
(202] 


b 

I 

K 


WHAT  IS  A  GOOD  PICTURE? 

the  work  in  hand.  He  can  employ 
the  whole  scale  or  he  can  reduce  his 
choice  to  the  few  conventional  symbols 
used  in  a  beautiful  Persian  rug;  the 
only  imperative  law  being  that  he  shall 
go  direct  to  nature  for  his  inspiration; 
the  inevitable  penalty  of  failure  in  this 
respect  being  the  limbo  of  the  imitator 
— the  loss  of  all  freshness,  spontaneity, 
and  personality.  With  this  one  restric- 
tion the  artist's  latitude  is  practically 
unlimited,  for  in  a  general  sense  art  is 
any  object  made  by  man  which  is  con- 
ceded by  his  fellow-man  to  be  beautiful. 
In  regard  to  the  picture,  it  is  difficult 
to  foresee  at  present  just  how  far  the 
average  cultivated  person  will  follow 
the  artist  into  the  region  of  pure  sym- 
bolism; how  few  of  the  elements  he  will 
demand,  and  how  much  his  own  im- 
agination will  supply.  When  we  remem- 
ber that  less  than  a  generation  ago  the 

[208J 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

work  of  Corot  and  of  Millet  was  near- 
ly incomprehensible  to  the  cultivated 
French  public ;  that  even  the  artist  juries 
refused  it  admission  to  the  Salon;  that 
twenty  years  since  those  who  freely  ac- 
cepted the  work  of  Monet  and  Sisley 
were  few  indeed,  we  may  confidently 
look  forward  to  a  time  when  only  the 
most  essential  symbols  of  beauty  will 
be  required  of  the  artist.  But  what 
exact  direction  this  synthetic  develop- 
ment will  take  we  can  only  conjecture  at 
the  present  time.  Whether  Matisse  and 
his  followers  in  France  to-day  are  the 
true  prophets  crying  in  the  wilder- 
ness the  future  alone  can  demonstrate. 
If  this  group  finally  makes  good  it  will 
be  because  they  have  discovered  some- 
thing which  is  fundamentally  true  and 
human,  something  which  is  sincerely  (if 
blindly)  desired  by  the  race  at  large.  It 
is  quite  certain  that  no  abnormality 

[204] 


WHAT  IS  A  GOOD  PICTURE? 

masquerading  under  the  name  of  the 
"art  of  the  future"  will  win  a  perma- 
nent place  in  the  regards  of  humanity. 
The  beauty  which  is  to  endure  must  be 
sane  and  wholesome,  because  the  human 
race  is  sound  at  heart  and  can  be 
counted  upon  in  the  long  run  to  reject 
anything  which  is  essentially  unhealthy 
or  decadent. 

In  the  meantime  all  our  aesthetic  ex- 
perience points  to  the  fact  that  the  new 
beauty  does  not  destroy  our  love  or 
appreciation  of  the  old.  A  picture  by 
Rembrandt  or  Velasquez  meets  to-day 
with  as  much  admiration  as  if  the 
"luminarist"  or  the  "symbolist"  school 
had  not  arisen.  A  thing  that  is  once 
truly  beautiful  is  always  beautiful ;  and 
the  painters  of  to-day  can  remain  calmly 
confident  that  if  they  are  true  to  their 
own  ideals  and  to  the  spirit  of  their 
times,  their  output  will  be  accorded  the 

[205J 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

same  meed  of  praise  by  future  genera- 
tions that  we  to-day  give  to  the  work  of 
the  old  masters. 


XX 

THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

WHEN  instantaneous  photography  was 
first  discovered,  some  thirty  years  ago, 
high  hopes  of  it  were  entertained  by 
the  artists.  It  was  thought,  for  instance, 
that  it  would  prove  of  inestimable  value 
to  such  painters  as  Meissonier  and 
Schreyer,  men  who  delighted  to  portray 
the  horse  in  violent  action.  But  to  the 
surprise  of  everybody  these  great  ex- 
pectations were  not  fulfilled.  At  first, 
the  artists  themselves  were  puzzled  to 
account  for  this  and  to  explain  why  the 
curiously  contorted  attitudes  now  dis- 
closed for  the  first  time,  conveyed  so 
little  the  impression  of  motion.  But 
when  the  instantaneous  photographs 

f207] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

were  subjected  to  a  process  of  selec- 
tion and  elimination,  it  was  finally  dis- 
covered that  there  were  practically  but 
two  instants  in  the  stride  of  the  gallop- 
ing horse  that  conveyed  any  idea  of 
rapid  flight  to  the  human  eye.  The  first 
of  these  was  at  the  very  beginning  of 
the  stride,  when,  with  all  four  legs 
bunched  together  under  the  belly,  the 
animal  was  preparing  for  the  forward 
leap;  and  the  second  was  at  the  end  of 
the  impulse,  when,  with  legs  out- 
stretched to  the  limit,  the  horse  was 
ready  to  take  the  ground  again  for 
another  stride.  Both  of  these  periods, 
it  will  be  seen,  were  the  instants  of 
arrest  of  motion — instants  when  the  hu- 
man eye  could  readily  seize  the  action 
without  the  intervention  of  the  kodak. 
Then  at  last  was  perceived  the  funda- 
mental law  which  underlay  the  phe- 
nomenon :  the  human  eye,  and  the  hu- 

[208] 


Emil  Carlsen — "  Landscape ' 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

man  brain  behind  it,  declined  to  accept 
as  a  symbol  of  motion  anything  which 
the  eye  had  not  been  able  to  see  for  and 
by  itself  unaided.  In  this  case,  of  course, 
it  was  only  during  the  two  instants  of 
arrest  of  motion  that  the  eye  had  been 
able  to  note  the  position  of  the  horse's 
limbs.  And  these  two  positions  of  com- 
parative inaction  had,  through  long  as- 
sociation, become  the  permanent  and 
fixed  symbols  of  action  in  the  racing 
horse.  The  kodak  had  revealed  hitherto 
unsuspected  facts  and  aspects  of  mo- 
tion, but  the  eye  would  have  none  of 
them,  and  clung  only  to  that  which  was 
visual. 

It  was  this  experience  with  the  earliest 
kodaks  which  finally  made  plain  the 
reason  why,  from  time  out  of  mind,  ar- 
tists desiring  to  convey  the  concept  of 
motion  had  instinctively  chosen  the  end 
or  the  beginning  of  the  stroke  or  im- 

[209] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

pulse — the  axe  poised  in  mid-air  ready 
for  its  downward  sweep,  or  the  stroke 
completed  in  the  heart  of  the  tree — the 
lifting  wave  poised  for  the  fall,  or  the 
breaker  that  has  crashed  to  its  turbulent 
end  upon  the  beach.  Shortly  also,  it 
began  to  be  seen  that  the  marine 
painter  who  depended  upon  the  kodak 
for  his  drawing,  lost  all  sense  of  motion 
in  the  waves,  that  the  wind-blown 
drapery  of  a  photograph  was  nearly  as 
rigid  as  a  sheet  of  crumpled  tin;  that 
the  impression,  in  fact,  which  the  eye 
received  from  nature  was  not  that  which 
was  rendered  by  the  camera;  and  that, 
therefore,  the  human  brain  could  never 
accept  the  photograph  as  a  thoroughly 
satisfactory  transcript  of  nature. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  hopes  which 
are  at  present  being  built  upon  color- 
photography  are  doomed  to  like  disap- 
pointment— for  the  simple  reason  that 

[210] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

the  photographic  lens  in  no  way  resem- 
bles the  lens  of  the  human  eye.  The 
very  fact  that  it  is  a  more  perfect  instru- 
ment is  against  it.  It  gives  us  scientific 
facts;  and  scientific  facts  are  generally 
artistic  lies.  Art  has  nothing  to  do  with 
things  as  they  are,  but  only  with  things 
as  they  appear  to  be,  with  the  visual  not 
the  actual,  with  impressions,  not  with 
realities.  It  is  a  scientific  fact,  for  in- 
stance, that  trees  are  green,  and  yet  it 
is  only  under  the  rarest  combination  of 
favoring  circumstances  that  a  tree  is 
really  green  to  the  visual  sense.  It  is 
much  more  likely  to  be  pearly-gray  or 
royal-purple  or  rich  amber  or  sapphire- 
blue,  according  as  it  happens  to  be  seen 
under  the  pale  effulgence  of  dawn,  the 
shimmering  blaze  of  noonday,  the  gold- 
en glow  of  sunset  or  the  azure  mystery 
of  night.  And  it  is  the  same  with  every 
other  landscape  feature  under  the  great 

[2111 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

blue  arch  of  heaven.  Each  rock,  each 
tree,  each  waving  field  of  grain  has,  of 
course,  its  fixed  and  definite  local  color, 
but  the  appearance  of  each  of  these  ob- 
jects changes  a  thousand  times  a  day. 
And  it  is  with  this  equation — this  fleet- 
ing, intangible,  ever-shifting,  ever-vary- 
ing appearance,  that  artists  have  to  do. 
The  facts  of  nature  are  to  him  nothing, 
the  mood  everything. 

By  an  ironical  chance  he  has  it  in  his 
power  to  convince  the  most  uncom- 
promising and  unimaginative  scientific 
purist  of  the  truth  of  his  statement  that 
the  most  unquestionable  facts  of  science 
are  often  the  most  shameless  of  visual 
lies — and  this  by  the  simplest  sort  of  a 
scientific  demonstration.  In  the  dia- 
gram on  page  213,  two  upright  lines  of 
equal  length  are  traced  side  by  side, 
and  near  enough  together  to  allow  of 
easy  visual  comparison.  To  No.  1  have 

[212] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

been  affixed  at  top  and  bottom  a  pair  of 
divergent  wings  extending  upward  and 
downward  away  from  the  centre.  To 
No.  2  the  same  wings  have  been  affixed, 


No.  i. 


No.  *. 


but  their  direction  has  been  reversed  so 
that  they  extend  toward  the  centre  of 
the  diagram  instead  of  away  from  it. 
Now  no  amount  of  didactic  statement 
will  convince  the  human  eye  that  those 
two  central  lines  are  of  the  same  length. 

[213] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Here  the  scientific  fact  has  become  a 
visual  lie.  If  an  artist  should  by  any 
chance  be  using  these  two  forms  as 
units  in  a  decorative  frieze  wherein  it 
was  essential  that  they  should  be  of  the 
same  length,  he  would  unhesitatingly 
lengthen  the  central  line  of  No.  2  and 
shorten  that  of  No.  1,  so  that  visually 
they  would  become  equal;  and  in  so 
doing  he  would  be  telling  the  truth  in 
his  own  way;  whereas  had  he  allowed 
the  foot-rule  to  control  him  he  would 
have  been  guilty  of  an  artistic  lie. 

The  Greek  architects,  observing  that 
the  horizontal  architrave  surmounting 
the  columns  on  their  temples  appeared 
to  sag,  corrected  the  fault  by  giving 
their  architrave  a  slightly  upward  arch, 
thus  by  means  of  a  curve  securing  a 
straight  line ;  or  at  least  a  line  which  was 
architecturally  and  visually  straight. 

Here  then  clearly  lies  the  division  line 

[214] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

between  science  and  art — the  one  gives 
us  actual  truths,  the  other  visual  truths ; 
the  one  facts,  the  other  moods,  impres- 
sions, visions;  each  in  its  place  admi- 
rable, each  ministering  to  one  of  the  two 
great  needs  of  humanity,  the  physical 
and  the  spiritual.  If  only  a  pact  could 
be  signed  between  them,  by  the  terms  of 
which  each  should  agree  to  abide  peace- 
ably within  the  bounds  of  its  own  legiti- 
mate sphere,  all  would  be  well.  But  alas! 
science  is  a  conscienceless  freebooter. 
So  much  the  sturdier  of  the  two,  he 
encroaches  constantly  on  the  domain  of 
art;  insists  on  recognition  where  he  has 
no  right  to  a  hearing,  and  monopolizes 
the  whole  front  of  the  stage.  Even  the 
artists  are  unable  to  escape  his  impor- 
tunities; and  the  younger  ones  especi- 
ally are  often  misled  and  lured  to  a 
false  allegiance. 
This  is  small  wonder  of  course,  when 

[2151 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

you  remember  that  ever  since  the  day 
of  our  birth  we  have  been  storing  our 
minds  with  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  facts — very  useful  facts,  too,  in  their 
way,  facts  whose  possession  and  un- 
conscious daily  use  are  essential  to  our 
very  physical  existence.  But  when,  as 
artists,  we  go  into  the  open,  to  study 
and  to  dream,  they  rise  before  us  like  a 
miasma,  a  deadly  cloud  that  obscures 
the  whole  face  of  nature ;  so  that  we  see 
the  landscape  not  as  it  is,  but  as  we 
have  been  taught  in  some  former  stage 
of  existence  that  it  should  be. 
Among  the  facts  that  have  thus  been 
clamped  upon  us  there  are  two  alas! 
which  have  been  learned  by  everybody 
— that  trees  are  green  and  that  the  sky 
is  blue.  It  matters  not  that  the  sky  is 
often  pale  green,  or  violet,  or  pearl-gray 
or  opal,  blue  it  is  painted  forever  and 
forever ;  and  the  trees  are  painted  green 

[216] 


Birge  Harrison — "Woodstock  Meadows  in  Winter" 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

And  these  blue  and  green  monstrosities 
not  only  find  a  ready  sale  but  much 
loving  appreciation.  There  are  in  the 
world  so  many  others  who  as  children 
learned  that  the  sky  was  blue  and  the 
trees  were  green  and  have  never  since 
opened  their  eyes.  To  tell  the  truth,  so 
strong  is  the  hold  upon  us  of  these 
early  traditions  that  it  takes  many  years 
of  the  severest  training  to  overcome 
them.  In  many  cases,  and  not  infre- 
quently in  the  case  of  some  truly  great 
painter,  the  fifty-year  mark  is  chalked 
up  against  him  before  the  scales  fall 
utterly  from  his  eyes  and  he  is  able  at 
length  to  look  out  straight  before  him 
with  a  vision  that  is  clear  and  unob- 
scured.  Take  my  word  for  it,  technique 
is  not  the  difficult  thing  in  art.  Any 
reasonably  capable  youth  can  readily 
master  all  of  the  technical  problems  in 
existence  in  a  few  short  months,  but  it 

[217] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

requires  many  a  long  and  weary  year 
to  learn  to  see. 

And  to  think  that  but  for  those  stored- 
up  facts  it  would  all  have  been  so  easy. 
If  painters,  gazing  upon  nature,  could 
only  look  forth  with  the  simplicity  of  a 
new-born  child,  which  opens  its  eyes 
for  the  first  time  on  a  fresh  and  virgin 
world,  the  principal  problem  of  art 
would  be  solved  in  an  instant.  Give  us, 
Oh,  Lord!  to  see!  and  we  will  find  the 
means  of  expression. 

It  is  a  simple  platitude  to  say  that  an 
artist  can  always  paint  as  much  as  he 
sees.  All  of  the  fumbling,  and  struggle, 
and  hard  work  connected  with  a  pict- 
ure comes  of  the  effort  to  see  just  a 
little  more,  just  a  little  better.  Tech- 
nique truly  is  mere  child's  play.  It  is  a 
question,  moreover,  if  too  much  tech- 
nique is  not  a  serious  handicap  to  any 
artist — if  indeed  it  does  not  tend  to 

[218] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

degrade  him  to  the  level  of  the  mere 
handcraftsman.  At  any  rate,  Millet's 
previously  quoted  saying  to  the  effect 
that  technique  should  never  open  shop 
for  itself,  that  it  should  always  hide 
modestly  behind  the  idea  to  be  ex- 
pressed is  one  of  the  eternal  truths  of 
art.  In  the  work  of  his  own  great  period 
the  technique  is  so  rough  as  to  prove 
conclusively  his  personal  contempt  for 
mere  surface  quality.  And  this  crudity 
must  have  been  voluntary.  We  may  go 
even  further  and  say  that  it  was  inten- 
tional; for  in  his  own  brilliant  youth 
there  were  none  so  clever,  none  so  ha- 
bile as  he. 

In  the  case  of  our  own  Winslow  Homer 
also,  the  thing  to  be  said  is  often  so 
vital,  the  vision  so  clear-cut,  that  al- 
though the  paint  is  simply  flung  at  the 
canvas,  we  don't  care  a  fig.  The  mood 
has  been  rendered — the  message  has 

[219] 


LANDSCAPE   PAINTING 

carried,  and  we  do  not  stop  to  consider 
the  phraseology. 

But,  as  I  have  before  intimated,  each 
painter  must  look  at  all  times  out  of 
his  own  eyes,  and  not  through  the  eyes 
of  his  brother.  In  fact,  hi  the  modern 
scheme  of  things,  the  artist  is  the  last 
rank  individualist  to  survive.  For  him 
the  merger  and  the  combination  spell 
ruin.  Again  we  insist,  and  insist  yet 
once  again,  that  the  very  essence  and 
marrow  of  art  is  personality.  Any  sur- 
render of  personality,  therefore,  can 
lead  only  to  one  goal — the  abyss  of 
artistic  worthlessness. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  becomes 
interesting  to  inquire  just  how  much 
the  young  painter  may  accept  with 
safety  from  his  master;  in  what  manner 
he  may  best  acquire  the  thorough  and 
intimate  knowledge  of  technique  which 
is  so  essential  to  his  success,  without 

[220] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

sacrifice  of  that  personal  integrity  which 
is  still  more  essential.  Let  us  at  once 
concede  the  fact  that  there  is  no  perfect 
system  of  art  instruction.  But  without 
question  the  system  most  nearly  ap- 
proaching the  ideal  is  that  which  has 
the  great  art  school  or  institute  for  its 
central  idea.  To  begin  with,  students 
learn  much  more  from  each  other  than 
they  do  from  their  masters.  The  con- 
stant attrition  and  stimulation,  the 
wholesome  emulation  of  the  school 
keeps  every  mental  fibre  on  the  full 
jump,  every  nerve  alive  and  tingling. 
The  progress  made  by  each  helps  the 
other  forward.  The  student  sees  here 
a  technical  point,  there  a  trick  or  an 
idea,  and,  like  the  young  barbarian 
that  he  is,  he  promptly  appropriates 
them  all  to  his  own  use.  And  this  is 
just  so  much  to  the  good,  for  the  cal- 
low cub  is  putting  on  technique  much 

[221] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

as  a  young  animal  puts  on  flesh.  The 
system  has  only  one  serious  draw- 
back. The  tendency  of  all  schools  is  to 
develop  a  school.  This  is  bad,  because 
the  whole  intent  of  art  training  should 
be  to  develop  individual  artists,  each 
differing  from  the  other  to  the  full 
breadth  and  extent  of  personal  tem- 
perament. This  danger,  it  is  true,  arises 
only  toward  the  end  of  the  school  period 
when  the  youths'  eyes  are  at  last  open 
and  they  are  beginning  to  "take  notice" 
of  things  about  them.  But  it  is  neverthe- 
less a  very  genuine  and  menacing  dan- 
ger, which  is  to  be  guarded  against  and 
combated  in  every  way  possible. 

When  in  the  course  of  human  events 
it  came  my  own  turn  to  fulfil  the  uni- 
versal duty  of  the  older  to  the  younger 
generation,  I  had  this  danger  writ  large 
before  me.  One  day  there  came  the  in- 
evitable little  deputation  of  students, 

[222] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

asking  if  the  master  would  kindly  con- 
sent to  paint  a  study  before  the  class, 
"just  to  show  the  way  he  would  go 
about  it"  to  obtain  this  effect  or  that. 
My  reply,  I  remember,  was  somewhat 
brusque.  "Not  on  your  life,"  I  said.  "I 
will  tell  you  all  that  I  know  of  the  fun- 
damental principles  which  underlie  all 
good  art,  and  which  are  everywhere 
and  eternally  the  same.  I  will  tell  you 
also  as  much  as  I  personally  know  of 
the  infinite  variety  of  technical  meth- 
ods which  abound  in  oil  painting, 
and  from  which  it  is  yours  to  select 
at  will  such  as  may  best  suit  the  tem- 
perament or  the  personal  point  of  view 
of  each  of  your  number.  But  I  will 
never  do  you  the  unkind  service  of 
putting  you  in  the  way  to  imitate  a 
technique  which,  though  serviceable  to 
me  personally,  could  no  more  fit  your 
aesthetic  needs  than  would  an  old  coat 

[223] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

of  mine  fit  your  bodies.  Remember  that 
art  is  nature  as  the  artist  sees  it,  and  it 
is  no  more  possible  for  two  human 
beings  to  see  nature  in  the  same  way 
than  for  the  same  two  people  to  have 
exactly  similar  features.  As  our  brains 
vary,  so  does  our  point  of  view.  Cling 
desperately  to  your  own  vision,  there- 
fore. Accept  no  advice,  take  no  criticism 
that  does  not  harmonize  with  it.  In  this 
way  only  can  you  hope  to  be  original. 
Turn  the  mind  to  nature  like  a  mirror 
and  let  it  reflect  exactly  what  is  thrown 
upon  it.  He  who  attempts  to  improve 
upon  nature  either  lacks  judgment  or 
is  endowed  with  a  conceit  so  oolossal 
that  there  is  no  health  in  him.  Be 
reverent  before  nature  and  honest  with 
yourself,  and  your  art  will  ring  true 
every  time.  All  of  you,  it  is  true,  will 
not  sing  the  song  of  the  nightingale, 
because  you  were  not  all  born  nightin- 

[224] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

gales;  but  the  blackbird's  lay  is  sweet, 
and  the  thrush  and  the  oriole  fill  the 
woods  with  melody.  Even  the  homely 
robin  and  the  linnet  have  modest  little 
notes  of  their  own  which  are  pleasant  to 
the  ear  of  a  dewy  April  morning.  Of 
all  the  songsters  in  creation  there  is 
only  one,  I  believe,  whose  lay  is  uni- 
versally condemned — and  that  is  the 
parrot." 

The  greater  the  artist,  I  think,  the 
more  certain  is  he  to  cling  religiously  to 
nature,  not  only  for  his  inspiration,  but 
for  the  actual  material  of  his  creations. 
Rodin  not  long  since  said  to  an  inter- 
viewer, "All  my  attention  as  an  artist 
is  devoted  to  reproducing  exactly  what 
I  see  in  nature.  I  do  not  endeavor  to 
'express  something.'  Those  who  have  a 
pre-conceived  idea — an  inspiration  as 
they  call  it — are  seldom  able  to  render 
their  ideal.  Those,  on  the  contrary,  who 

[225] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

charm  us  by  their  talent  have  done 
nothing  throughout  the  ages  but  repro- 
duce nature.  They  copy  as  closely  as 
ever  they  can  the  most  beautiful,  the 
most  admirable,  the  most  perfect  thing 
in  the  world— which  is  nature." 

This  does  not  mean,  however,  that  an 
artist  must  necessarily  be  a  mere  ma- 
chine, that  he  has  no  intellectual  liberty 
of  choice  in  regard  to  what  he  shall  rep- 
resent and  how  he  shall  represent  it. 
Art  includes  every  object  of  intrinsic 
beauty  that  was  ever  created  by  human 
hands.  The  Turkish  rug,  the  Chinese 
keramic,  the  Moorish  carving,  the  Jap- 
anese color-print  and  the  Gothic  cathe- 
dral are  just  as  truly  art  in  the  highest 
sense  as  the  Greek  marble  or  the  mod- 
ern painting.  But  there  are  certain  lim- 
its beyond  which  an  artist  may  not  step, 
and  all  art  which  has  attained  to  great- 
ness has  been  the  sincere  expression, 

[226] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

not  only  of  the  individual  artist,  but  of 
the  race  to  which  he  belongs,  and  the 
epoch  in  which  he  lives.  It  will  not  do 
for  Americans  to  make  Oriental  rugs  or 
Japanese  color-prints ;  and  we  have  all 
seen  and  deplored  the  Japanese  at- 
tempt to  assimilate  and  reproduce  our 
own  occidental  art — have  shuddered 
indeed  at  the  brilliant  and  hollow  shell 
without  a  soul.  Is  it  not  enough  for  us 
to  admire  without  attempting  to  imi- 
tate, to  surround  ourselves  with  the 
beauty  of  all  ages  and  all  peoples  while 
calmly  pursuing  the  type  of  beauty 
which  it  is  given  to  us  to  see  as  none 
others  have  been  able  to  see  it  ?  Now, 
if  I  am  not  much  mistaken,  the  form  of 
beauty  which  appeals  to  us  as  it  has 
appealed  to  no  other  race  in  any  other 
epoch  of  the  world's  history  is  the 
poetry  of  out-of-door  nature,  her  mys- 
tery, and  her  ever-varying  and  shifting 

[227] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

moods.  Surely  in  this  wide  field  there 
remains  to  us  a  sufficient  latitude  of 
choice  both  as  regards  the  subjects  we 
shall  paint  and  the  manner  in  which 
we  shall  render  our  impressions.  It  is 
always  open  to  us  to  choose  our  direc- 
tion. In  each  of  us  there  is  a  Dr.  Jekyll 
and  a  Mr.  Hyde,  and  in  art  as  in  life 
it  depends  on  ourselves  which  shall  rule. 
When  I  was  a  student  in  Paris  away 
back  in  the  seventies,  a  group  of  young 
artists  who  were  at  that  time  making 
some  stir  in  the  art  world  asserted  with 
a  great  deal  of  unnecessary  noise  and 
bluster  that  good  painting  could  glorify 
the  most  revolting  subject.  The  sub- 
ject was  nothing,  the  craftsmanship 
everything.  I  remember  that  I  was 
temporarily  caught  up  in  the  swirl  of 
the  movement  and  that  for  a  time  I 
ran  with  the  shouting  iconoclasts;  and 
the  memory  of  this  makes  me  still  le- 

[228] 


From  a  photograph,  copyright  by  N.  E.  Montross 

W.  L.  Lathrop— "At  Dusk1 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

nient  with  any  youngster  who  raises  the 
old  cry — false  as  it  is.  It  is  a  phase — 
one  of  the  growing  pains  of  adolescence 
which  are  normal  and  to  be  expected. 
If  we  only  remember  that,  we  shall  have 
no  cause  to  worry.  I  believe  that  every 
young  painter  must  at  some  time  wor- 
ship at  the  shrine  of  technique,  just  as 
every  youth  who  is  to  grow  up  to  true 
and  generous  manhood  must  at  some 
period  of  his  boyish  career  be  a  socialist. 
But  it  is  a  sign  of  mental  atrophy — of 
arrested  development,  when  the  youth 
or  the  artist  fails  to  graduate  out  of 
this  chrysalis  stage. 

Nature  is  not  all  beautiful  by  any 
means.  But  why  should  we  choose  to 
perpetuate  her  ugly  side  ?  I  believe  it  to 
be  one  of  the  artist's  chief  functions, 
as  it  should  be  his  chief  delight,  to 
watch  for  the  rare  mood  when  she  wafts 
aside  the  veil  of  the  commonplace  and 

[229] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

shows  us  her  inner  soul  in  some  be- 
wildering vision  of  poetic  beauty.  I 
should  not  care  personally  to  hold  a 
brief  for  the  opponents  of  this  view — 
nor  should  I  know  how  to  support  it. 
Yet  a  painter  of  world-wide  reputation 
once  said  to  me  that  he  positively  hated 
a  picture  in  which  there  was  a  moon. 
He  declared  that  any  picture  which  de- 
pended for  its  appeal  upon  the  beauty 
of  the  subject  was  weak-kneed  art,  pub- 
licly advertising  its  own  weakness.  The 
very  perfection  of  craftsmanship  could 
not  save  such  a  picture,  he  said.  The 
best  and  only  answer  to  this  sincere 
critique  is  that  the  painter  who  made 
it  has  remained  all  his  life  a  craftsman 
— a  craftsman  of  the  highest  distinc- 
tion if  you  will,  but  never  an  artist. 

Now  from  all  that  has  been  said  above, 
it  would  appear  that  originality  must 
be  the  easiest  of  all  qualities  to  attain. 

[230] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

But  this  is,  unfortunately,  not  the  case. 
The  facility  is  only  apparent.  The  hard 
and  sober  reality  is  that  the  personal 
note  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  things 
for  an  artist  to  grasp  and  to  hold.  It 
is  only  necessary  to  count  over  the 
number  of  our  truly  original  artists 
(it  can  be  done  upon  the  ten  fingers) 
to  see  how  true  this  statement  is.  One 
of  the  oldest  of  our  proverbs  says  that 
to  err  is  human.  It  is  also  human,  un- 
fortunately, to  be  a  sheep — to  do  as 
you  see  others  do — to  imitate  the  thing 
which  you  admire;  and  the  sad  result 
of  this  is  that  few  ever  learn  to  see  the 
thing  which  lies  out  in  the  sunlight 
under  their  own  very  eyes.  And  this  is 
why  originality — why  true  impression- 
ism will  ever  remain  one  of  the  rarest 
and  most  precious  qualities  in  art. 
Now  it  has  doubtless  been  objected 
that  the  present  chapter,  while  profess- 

[231] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

ing  to  deal  with  impressionism,  says 
mighty  little  about  the  impressionists. 
But  I  have  failed  singularly  in  my  in- 
tention if,  by  this  time,  I  have  not 
made  it  clear  that  anyone  who  honestly 
and  sincerely  records  his  impressions 
of  nature  is  in  the  truest  sense  an  im- 
pressionist— that  Velasquez  and  Titian 
and  Rembrandt  were  as  truly  impres- 
sionists as  were  Manet  or  Monet  or 
Sisley — because,  in  the  canvases  of 
these  great  masters  of  the  Renaissance, 
there  rings  the  true  note  of  personality 
— proof  positive  of  their  honesty,  their 
reverence,  and  their  humility  before 
nature.  To  tell  the  truth,  the  so-called 
French  impressionists  were  far  more  ac- 
curately termed  luminarists,  or  painters 
of  light.  Their  special  achievement  in 
art  was  a  purely  technical  triumph— 
the  discovery  that  by  the  use  of  broken 
color  in  its  prismatic  simplicity  the 

[232] 


THE  TRUE  IMPRESSIONISM 

pulsating,  vibrating  effect  of  light  could 
be  transferred  to  the  surface  of  a  can- 
vas. But  they  were  neither  the  fathers 
of  impressionism  nor  were  they  es- 
pecially distinguished  in  this  line.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  somewhat 
deficient  in  the  quality  of  personal 
vision,  and  their  rage  to  secure  the 
effect  of  light  at  all  hazards  led  to  a 
certain  monotony  of  technique  which 
tended  to  blunt  the  personal  note  in 
their  work. 


[883] 


XXI 

THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN 
ART* 


hear  with  increasing  frequency 
to-day  the  statement  that  art  is  uni- 
versal and  without  a  country;  that, 
being  the  record  of  abstract  beauty,  it 
cannot  be  confined  within  stated  geo- 
graphical limits;  that  the  terms  "French 
art,"  "English  art,"  etc.,  are  therefore 
absurd.  Art  is  art  tout  bonnement,  and 
that  is  all  there  is  to  it. 

According  to  these  critics,  the  mere 
fact  that  a  man  with  the  temperamental 
sense  of  beauty  chances  to  be  born  in 
France  or  in  Holland  does  not  neces- 
sarily make  him  a  French  or  a  Dutch 
painter.  If  the  Frenchman  were  brought 
up  in  Holland,  and  the  Hollander  in 

*  Reprinted  by  consent  of  the  North  American  Review. 
[234] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

France,  the  Frenchman  would  then  in- 
evitably belong  to  the  Dutch  school  and 
the  Dutchman  would  develop  as  a 
French  impressionist.  Each,  being  tem- 
peramentally sensitive  to  beauty,  would 
simply  respond  to  the  appeal  of  his  en- 
vironment. 

Now,  if  this  is  correct,  there  could,  of 
course,  be  no  such  thing  as  American 
art.  But  that  there  is  such  a  thing — an 
art  which  would  have  been  impossible 
but  for  the  evolution  of  the  American 
man,  as  distinct  from  the  men  of  Ger- 
many, France,  Spain,  or  even  England 
— is  precisely  what  I  hope  to  demon- 
strate in  this  final  chapter.  And  that 
this  American  art  is  destined  to  grow 
rapidly  in  power  and  distinction,  until 
it  occupies  for  its  little  time  the  fore- 
most place  in  the  world  of  art,  is  not,  I 
think,  beyond  the  power  of  reasonable 
demonstration. 

[236] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

Let  us  first  clear  the  ground  by  re- 
hearsing those  points  upon  which  both 
parties  are  agreed. 

All  admit,  of  course,  that  art  is  the 
record  of  beauty  in  some  one  of  its 
myriad  forms,  be  it  a  Persian  rug,  a 
Japanese  keramic,  a  Greek  statue,  or  a 
modern  oil-painting.  In  each  case,  if  the 
beauty  be  of  a  sufficiently  high  order,  the 
result  is  art.  We  all  admit  also  that  art 
is  personality — that  nature  is  only  the 
crude  material  from  which  art  is  made. 
This  crude  material  must  be  fused  in 
the  alembic  of  the  human  soul,  mixed 
with  the  alloy  of  temperament,  and  col- 
ored with  the  artist's  personality  before 
it  can  be  poured  out  into  the  final  mould 
and  receive  the  name  of  art.  It  is  the 
artist's  personality,  in  other  words,  that 
makes  the  art.  And  just  according  to 
the  beauty  or  the  individuality  of  his 
temperament  will  be  the  beauty  or  the 

[236] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

individuality  of  the  artistic  result.  If  he 
be  a  poet,  like  Corot,  the  result  will  be 
a  poetic  and  delicate  interpretation  of 
nature.  If  he  be  a  colorist,  like  Monti- 
celli,  the  result  will  be  some  such  gor- 
geous mosaic  of  splendid  color  as  that 
wonderful  painter  gave  us.  If  he  be  a 
purist  of  the  fine,  clean-cut  intellectual 
type,  such  as  Saint-Gaudens,  the  result 
will  be  something  akin  to  the  Sherman 
monument  that  dignifies  the  entrance  to 
Central  Park  in  New  York. 

But  just  here  comes  the  dividing  line 
between  the  contending  factions.  What 
is  personality?  One  group  declares 
that  personality  is  simply  temperament 
which  plays  freely  within  the  artist's 
soul;  and,  working  upon  whatever 
chance  material  its  environment  affords, 
transmutes  this  crude  material  into  the 
fine  gold  of  art.  The  opposing  group, 
while  admitting  that  the  basis  of  artistic 

[237] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

personality  is  temperament,  asserts  that 
this  temperament  is  bound  hand  and 
foot  by  the  inherited  traits  and  charac- 
teristics of  a  thousand  ancestors,  and 
that  the  Frenchman  brought  up  in  Hol- 
land would  therefore  always  remain 
essentially  a  Frenchman,  in  spite  of  his 
Dutch  surroundings.  They  claim  also 
that  racial  personality  is  just  as  im- 
portant a  factor  in  all  good  art  as  in- 
dividual personality.  They  assert,  more- 
over, that  no  artist  can  possibly  shake 
off  the  racial  chains  that  bind  him,  and 
that  any  attempt  to  do  so  could  only 
result  in  some  monstrous  hybrid  or 
some  feeble  imitation  not  deserving  the 
name  of  art. 

Each  artist  is,  first  of  all,  a  unit  of 
some  specified  human  group  or  race. 
Therefore,  if  he  truly  and  conscien- 
tiously records  his  own  impressions,  he 
will  also  record  the  accumulated  im- 

[238] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

pressions  of  the  race  to  which  he  be- 
longs. That  he  does  this  is  amply  proved 
by  the  fact  that  any  reasonably  expert 
judge  will  tell  you  whether  a  picture 
belongs  to  the  French  or  the  Dutch  or 
the  Scandinavian  school,  without  know- 
ing the  name  of  the  painter,  or  any- 
thing more  of  the  picture  than  the  can- 
vas itself  discloses. 

It  is  impossible,  therefore,  to  avoid 
the  conclusion  that  racial  individuality 
in  art  is  fact — and  a  very  real  and 
solid  fact  at  that.  In  some  of  our  mod- 
ern schools  of  painting,  this  racial  char- 
acter is  so  strong  as  quite  to  dominate 
and  submerge  the  individual  note,  so 
that  it  is  often  difficult  to  distinguish 
the  work  of  one  well-known  painter 
from  that  of  some  equally  celebrated 
fellow-artist.  This  is  particularly  true 
of  the  Dutch  school,  for  instance.  In 
fact,  the  whole  art  of  the  Netherlands 

[239] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

is  so  intensely  " Dutch"  that  we  may 
know  the  characteristics  of  the  Dutch 
people  as  well  by  studying  their  art  a's 
by  reading  all  that  has  been  written 
about  them. 

Now,  it  is  a  curious  thing  that,  while 
we  in  America  have,  for  the  past  twenty 
years,  been  discussing  the  question  of 
whether  any  such  thing  as  a  national 
school  of  art  exists  here,  in  Paris  "VEcole 
Americaine"  has  for  fully  as  long  a  time 
been  recognized  as  a  distinct  school, 
with  a  marked  personal  note  of  its  own. 
And  it  must  be  remembered  that  this 
verdict  was  based  upon  a  very  partial 
and  imperfect  knowledge  of  American 
art  even  as  it  then  existed;  for  the  "Am- 
erican School,"  as  it  was  known  to  the 
French  writers  of  1885,  embraced  only 
a  certain  number  of  young  American 
artists  who  were  living  in  France,  and 
whose  whole  ~art  training  had  been 

[240] 


Charles  Melville  Dewey — "  October  Evening ; 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

received  in  Paris  under  exclusively 
French  influences.  In  spite  of  this  fact, 
the  French  critics  felt  in  the  work  of 
Sargent,  of  John  Alexander,  of  Mel- 
chers,  of  Alexander  Harrison  and  of 
Saint-Gaudens,  an  exotic  note,  anew 
point  of  view,  whose  chief  characteristic 
was  an  unusual  directness  and  clarity 
of  vision,  coupled  with  a  corresponding 
simplicity  of  statement. 

A  great  French  painter  once  said  to 
me:  "You  Americans  have  one  ad- 
vantage over  all  others.  You  have  no 
traditions.  You  can  look  straight  at 
nature  out  of  your  own  eyes,  while  our 
vision  is  clouded  and  obscured  by  the 
inheritance  of  a  thousand  years." 

If  to  the  above  list  of  names  we  add  a 
few  others — Winslow  Homer,  Homer 
Martin,  John  La  Farge,  George  Inness, 
Alexander  H.  Wyant,  all  those  of 
painters  who  were  at  that  time  at  the 

[241] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

full  height  of  their  powers,  but  who 
were  established  at  home  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic — it  will  be  seen  that  the 
French  were  not  mistaken  in  announc- 
ing the  appearance  on  the  Western 
horizon  of  a  new  and  original  school 
of  art. 

Since  the  date  above  mentioned,  art 
in  America  has  made  such  rapid  strides 
that  a  roll-call  of  American  artists  of 
the  first  class  taken  to-day  would  have 
to  include  three  or  four  times  as  many 
names  as  could  have  been  mustered  in 
1885.  And  it  is  a  significant  fact  that 
this  increase  in  the  number  of  American 
artists,  and  in  the  quality  of  their  out- 
put, has  been  coincident  with  a  phe- 
nomenal decrease  in  the  number  of 
really  great  artists  at  present  practising 
abroad.  This  decrease  has  been  par- 
ticularly marked  in  France,  which,  dur- 
ing the  larger  part  of  the  nineteenth 

[242] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

century,  certainly  led  the  world  in  all 
matters  connected  with  art.  Yet  in 
France  to-day  we  will  search  in  vain 
for  any  such  body  of  painters  as  made 
up  the  wonderful  school  of  Barbizon, 
which,  in  the  fifty  years  beginning  with 
1830  and  ending  with  1880,  gave  the 
world  the  greatest  art  it  has  seen  since 
the  Italian,  Dutch,  and  Spanish  Re- 
naissance of  the  sixteenth  century. 

It  could  hardly  be  expected,  I  suppose, 
that  this  glorious  time  of  blossom  and 
fruitage  should  repeat  itself  in  France 
during  our  own  time.  Indeed,  all  history 
has  shown  that  things  do  not  so  happen 
in  the  domain  of  art.  Art  is  a  plant 
whose  seed  germinates  only  under  cer- 
tain special  and  favoring  conditions. 
These  conditions  are  really  epochal  in 
their  character,  and  they  rarely  recur 
in  the  life  of  any  one  nation;  or,  if  by 
some  specially  happy  chance  they  do 

[243] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

repeat  themselves,  it  is  only  after  the 
lapse  of  many  centuries. 

To  every  energetic  people  there  comes 
sooner  or  later  a  time  of  great  material 
prosperity;  it  may  be  as  the  result  of 
successful  wars,  of  territorial  expansion 
or  of  commercial  supremacy.  Whatever 
the  cause,  this  period  of  prosperity  is 
invariably  accompanied  by  a  tremen- 
dous mental  stir  and  awakening,  and 
this,  in  turn,  is  followed  by  a  magni- 
ficent outburst  of  art,  which  lasts  for 
fifty,  or  maybe  a  hundred  years,  and 
dies  away  as  it  came. 

Now,  if  ever  in  the  history  of  the  world 
conditions  have  been  ripe  for  the  birth 
of  a  great  art  movement,  they  are  so  in 
America  to-day.  Titanic  forces  have 
been  at  work  for  a  century  preparing 
the  way,  extracting  untold  wealth  from 
a  virgin  soil;  increasing  this  wealth  an 
hundredfold  by  the  help  of  marvellous 

[244] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

scientific  and  mechanical  genius;  con- 
quering, with  the  irresistible  impulse  of 
a  new  people,  every  physical  obstacle 
that  lay  in  their  way,  and  building  up 
the  richest  and  most  powerful  com- 
munity the  world  has  ever  known.  Its 
early  struggles  are  now  apparently  over, 
and  its  surplus  wealth  is  daily  increas- 
ing. The  average  of  comfort  is  high  and 
the  physical  well-being  of  the  people 
seems  practically  assured.  Whenever  in 
the  course  of  history  a  nation  attains  to 
this  stage  of  development,  it  begins  to 
reach  out  toward  the  ideal,  to  demand 
more  of  life  and  better  than  simple  food 
and  shelter. 

This  is  precisely  what  is  taking  place 
in  America  to-day.  There  is  a  growing 
demand  for  beauty  in  all  its  forms;  for 
the  adornment  of  our  public  buildings; 
— for  galleries  of  paintings  and  statuary, 
for  museums  containing  porcelains, 

[245] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

bronzes,  textiles,  prints  and  objects  of 
art  of  all  kinds — a  demand  so  insistent 
that  our  municipalities  and  our  legisla- 
tures are  everywhere  beginning  to  re- 
spond to  the  call  of  the  people.  This 
movement,  which  may  be  said  to  have 
started  a  scant  ten  years  ago,  is  spread- 
ing rapidly  all  over  the  country.  To  the 
art  museums  in  cities  of  the  first  class, 
such  as  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Boston, 
Chicago,  Cincinnati,  and  St.  Louis,  have 
already  been  added  museums  or  regu- 
lar yearly  exhibitions  in  many  cities  of 
the  second  or  third  class.  Among  these 
may  be  mentioned  Pittsburg,  Worcester 
Buffalo,  Toledo,  Minneapolis,  Kansas 
City,  Atchison,  Richmond,  Charleston, 
Atlanta,  Memphis,  Oakland,  and  Seat- 
tle ;  while  every  year  a  number  of  names 
is  added  to  the  list.  Unless  all  signs  fail, 
therefore,  we  may  expect  during  the 
current  century  an  unprecedented  de- 

[246] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

mand  for  art  in  the  United  States,  and 
we  are  certainly  justified  in  assuming 
that  native  artists  of  the  first  rank  will 
arise  to  meet  the  demand. 

Conceding  this  much,  it  will  be  inter- 
esting, and  also  I  think  quite  possible, 
to  forecast  the  general  trend  of  the 
movement  and  the  general  character  of 
the  new  art — for  new  it  is  bound  to  be. 

If  the  American  painters  of  thirty 
years  ago  had  been  separated  into  twro 
groups,  the  figure-painters  on  one  side 
and  the  landscape  men  on  the  other, 
the  balance  would  have  been  found  to 
be  fairly  even.  If  the  same  thing  were 
repeated  to-day,  fully  two-thirds  of  our 
ablest  painters  would  be  found  in  the 
camp  of  the  landscapists.  This  shifting 
of  the  balance  is  most  significant,  for 
it  shows  a  new  drift,  a  tendency  on  the 
part  of  our  artists  to  carry  their  easels 
out  into  the  open ;  to  paint,  or  to  try  to 

[247] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

paint,  all  of  the  shimmering,  iridescent 
effects  that  happen  only  under  the  great 
blue  arch  of  the  sky;  the  glory  of  the 
noonday  sunlight,  the  pale  beauty  of 
the  dawn,  the  golden  glow  of  sunset  and 
the  brooding  mystery  of  night. 

Why,  we  may  ask,  this  change  of  di- 
rection ?  The  answer  is  simple :  the  art- 
ists have  discovered  that  most  of  the 
unsolved  problems  of  art  lie  in  the  open 
air.  They  know  by  instinct  that  art,  to 
be  alive,  must  move  ever  forward  tow- 
ard some  new  goal.  If  it  remains  in  one 
rut,  it  stagnates  or  dies.  The  end  of 
every  great  art  movement  has  come 
when  its  living,  rushing,  turbulent 
waters  have  been  congealed  into  icy 
formulas — rules  of  thumb  by  the  use  of 
which  the  mere  artisan  can  produce  a 
sort  of  "near-art"  which  is  necessarily 
without  vitality  or  charm.  The  true 
artist  must  always  be  an  innovator,  a 

[248] 


O  t 

c  < 

a  "s 

2  s 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

pioneer  in  fresh  fields,  an  adventurer 
seeking  new  Eldorados.  If  he  now  goes 
afield,  therefore,  it  is  because  he  knows 
that  in  the  domain  of  indoor  figure- 
painting  there  are  few  undiscovered 
countries.  This  branch  of  art  was  ex- 
ploited long  ago  by  the  old  masters,  and 
their  achievements  were  so  transcend- 
ent that  any  modern  painter  who  sets 
out  to  equal  or  excel  them  in  their  own 
chosen  line  must  be  endowed  with  a 
large  share  of  courage  and  self-confi- 
dence. 

Another  cause  of  this  universal  return 
to  nature  is  doubtless  the  fact  that  our 
lives  are  not,  humanly  speaking,  so 
beautiful  as  they  once  were.  Our  cloth- 
ing is  no  longer  picturesque.  The  ad- 
vent of  farm  machinery  has  destroyed 
much  of  the  pastoral  and  bucolic  beauty 
of  country  life.  The  sowing  and  reaping 
and  binding  and  threshing  that  were 

[249] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

done  by  hand  in  the  old  days  with  such 
splendid  rhythmic  swing  of  muscle  are 
now  matters  of  revolving  wheels  and 
clattering  chains  and  knives.  Even  our 
buildings  have  deteriorated — at  least 
from  the  artist's  point  of  view;  for  the 
comfortable  villa  farmhouse  of  the 
present  day  does  not  cling  lovingly  to 
the  soil  and  become  part  of  the  environ- 
ing landscape,  as  did  the  spreading, 
low-hung  buildings  of  our  fathers.  And 
so,  to  quench  the  eternal  thirst  for 
beauty,  we  must  needs  return  once 
more  to  kindly  nature,  whose  beauty  is 
exhaustless  and  everlasting.  Her  skies 
have  lost  none  of  their  early  crystal- 
line charm  of  color;  her  hills  and  her 
rock-bound  coasts  are  as  grand  as  ever ; 
her  trees,  her  rivers  and  her  spread- 
ing fields  are  as  beautiful  and  as  ap- 
pealing now  as  in  the  days  of  Hesiod. 
But,  precious  beyond  all  other  things, 

[250] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

her  exquisite  and  ever-varying  effects 
— that  happen  because  of  the  change 
from  night  to  day  and  from  day  to  night 
again — are  spread  out  always  before  us, 
an  endless  feast  of  beauty  for  those  who 
have  eyes  to  see  and  minds  to  appre- 
ciate. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  quite  possible  that, 
in  the  very  changed  conditions  of  our 
civilization,  there  may  lurk  wonderful 
and  hitherto  unsuspected  opportunities 
for  our  future  artists,  and  especially  our 
figure-painters.  There  is  certainly  a 
strange  picturesqueness  in  some  of  our 
modern  steel  mills,  with  their  cyclopean 
forces  at  work  against  backgrounds  of 
whirling  steam  and  glowing  furnace. 
Even  our  sky-scrapers  have  an  unusual 
beauty  of  their  own,  and  the  sky-line  of 
lower  New  York  is  far  from  being  ugly 
or  uninteresting.  Another  field  that  is 
replete  with  possibilities  is  the  teeming 

[251] 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

and  kaleidoscopic  life  of  our  city  slums, 
which  the  inexorable  law  of  migration 
has  crowded  with  strange  peoples  from 
the  far  corners  of  the  earth ;  peoples  who 
are  as  yet  unassimilated,  who  still  wear 
their  exotic  costumes  and  live  their 
strange,  foreign  lives  in  our  very  midst. 
There  has  already  been  some  attempt 
to  use  this  exhaustless  material  (unfor- 
tunately, as  yet,  without  adequate  tech- 
nical skill),  but  when  the  trained  master 
shall  paint  for  us  the  life  of  our  streets 
with  all  its  vital  and  original  character, 
we  shall  welcome  his  pictures  as  a  price- 
less addition  to  the  world's  store  of 
precious  things. 

I  have  as  yet  made  no  mention  of 
mural  painting,  which  is,  of  course,  des- 
tined to  occupy  a  very  important  place 
in  the  art  of  the  future.  Thousands  of 
new  public  and  private  buildings  all 
over  the  country  will  call  for  decoration, 

[252] 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  ART 

and  I  have  no  hesitation  in  predicting 
that  the  opportunity  thus  afforded  will 
result  in  some  bewilderingly  great  dis- 
covery in  advance  of  our  present-day 
knowledge  of  that  art — a  step  in  ad- 
vance at  least  as  important  as  that  made 
by  Puvis  de  Chavannes  when  he  painted 
the  out-of-door  atmosphere  upon  the 
walls  of  the  Pantheon  in  Paris.  It  is  at 
least  certain  that  the  movement  in  this 
same  direction  will  be  pushed  much 
farther  than  at  present,  and  that  open- 
air  effects  and  open-air  tones  will  be 
used  with  increasing  frequency  by  our 
mural  painters,  because  on  this  line 
only  can  they  hope  to  achieve  any  not- 
able advance  over  their  predecessors. 

The  fact  is  that  the  open  has  claimed 
us  as  a  people !  We  devote  ourselves  with 
ever-increasing  enthusiasm  to  out-of- 
door  pleasures  and  out-of-door  pursuits ; 
we  have  learned  to  love  out-of-door 


LANDSCAPE  PAINTING 

nature  and  out-of-door  beauty.  It  is  our 
best  achievement  as  a  nation;  and  our 
artists  in  this  are,  therefore,  simply 
keeping  step  with  the  march  of  modern 
civilization. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


QLOCT06U97 

•• 


•'    ' 


Ldorary 

ND  Harrison  - 

1340  Landscape 

_H24  1  painting 

ONE  V/?E!<  BOOK 

9L 


. 

«Ubrary 

ND 
13liO 

H21*  1 


UCLA-Art  Library 

ND  1340  H24I 


L  006  240  976  8 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  231  377    1 


